


The Undenied

by asmodeusyne



Series: An Unconsecrated Society [2]
Category: Dracula 2020, Dracula BBC - Fandom, Dracula Netflix - Fandom
Genre: Brides, Dracula - Freeform, F/M, French Revolution, M/M, claes bang - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:27:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 21,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22265599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asmodeusyne/pseuds/asmodeusyne
Summary: Zoe, now undead, continues her research with the help of the Harker Foundation and Arthur Holmwood, trying to find a way to detect susceptibility to the vampire pathogen and stop the unintended spread of vampires and revenants. Jonathan struggles with what it means to be vampire in the 21st century, and his personal feelings towards his maker. Dracula outwardly moderates his appetites, but remains an unrepentant and sadistic killer, only to face a challenge to his egotism when a forgotten bride with even fewer scruples than himself rises out of his 18th century past.
Relationships: Arthur Holmwood - Relationship, Dracula - Relationship, Jonathan Harker - Relationship, OC - Relationship, Zoe Van Helsing - Relationship
Series: An Unconsecrated Society [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1602802
Comments: 14
Kudos: 107





	1. The Reluctant Heir

**Author's Note:**

> Here we go. This one ventures even further into the realm of pure hedonism, though there is a plot, and there will be a satisfactory ending - I just don't know the timeline on that one. Expect a lot more explicit indulgence and some not-so-believable character flexes. I'll do my best to stay in the margins of the world I've built, but it is definitely my world, and not meant (so far as Unintended sort of is) to serve as a second series episode. So if you're looking for that it's probably best to wait for Moffat and Gatiss to sort that out.
> 
> If on the other hand you're down for some nasty, I will do my best.

Hyde Park, London

Jonathan Harker looked different from that last time she’d seen him, though every occasion afforded Zoe a fresh view of the potential that human blood had as a palliative cure to the vampire’s reduced aspect. 

She had taken care to give him space, not wanting to overwhelm him with her newly enhanced presence. If anyone had the right to dislike or distrust vampires, it was Jonathan Harker. That considered, she felt that her study of him was now becoming an exercise in voyeurism, and she could not now justify remaining detached. She wasn’t detached. They were linked by more than their condition. They needed each other.

His handsome good looks were restored to him, and he sported a stylish mop of ginger hair and a neatly trimmed beard, and looked like any young professional taking the air after a stressful office meeting. She watched him as he watched a young couple feed the ducks, lost in their own world. Zoe couldn’t mistake the hunger in his eyes, together with the sadness and longing. 

She placed herself where she was clearly visible to him, and raised a hand when his eyes turned to her. He smiled at her in his shy, restrained way and returned the gesture.

The hand he offered her was gloved in finely stitched black kid, hiding his sharp nails. The fabric felt pliant and soft in her hand as he squeezed it. She too had made an attempt to conceal them by trimming or covering them, but she found she preferred to be able to use her sense of touch. 

“You seem well, Mr. Harker,” she ventured. “Are you?”

“Jonathan,” he corrected warmly. “I am trying to seem well in hopes that my appearance will deceive even me.”

“Fake it until you make it,” she said with a smile, and then laughed when he tilted his head like a confused spaniel. She beckoned him to walk with her. He followed deferentially.

“Every time I think I’ve put my finger on the pulse of this age,” he said, unable to suppress his own laughter. “I hear something so ridiculous I feel…”

She smiled. “Like you’re a hundred and sixty-three years old, and you’ve missed two-thirds of the social zeitgeist?” 

He sighed, helplessly. “How will I ever catch up?”

“If you want my advice,” she said. “Do what most of the rest of us do - don’t try.”  
  
As they walked down the path, she noticed that he had a difficult time keeping his eyes from her. She imagined herself through them - a slender woman of graceful middle age, hair stylishly cut, eyes lined with black khol. She wore a turtleneck and a thigh length leather jacket, all of it of fine, hand made materials. She had inherited her maker’s weakness for fine clothes, and she had the means, so she embraced the vanity. 

But it was her face, not her ensemble, that seemed to fascinate her companion. When he next glanced up at her, she stopped him, and looked him in the eyes. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just -”

“I look like her,” she said and smiled. “I’ve been told.”

Jonathan’s expression hardened then, and she could feel a shadow passing over him. “Of course. I’m sure it fascinates him.”

She nodded. Together they passed under the dark trees. Zoe could see all of the little animals, the squirrels and song birds, huddling away in their dens and nests. A barn owl passed silently overhead. They watched it land on one of the pine boughs, settling under its wings. It still astonished her, this ability to see in the dark. Her vision was not the washed out darkness of her mortal life, but a riot of colours that made her dizzy when she tried too hard to understand them. 

“What he did to me was rape,” Jonathan said suddenly, almost matter of fact. “Worse than rape, really.”

Zoe held his gaze for a long moment, then nodded. She didn’t have the words so she decided to remain silent. 

“But you care for him,” he continued, and she could hear the frustration in his voice. “You love him.”

She sighed. “I could say it was some kind of genetic legacy.”

“Agatha didn’t love him,” Jonathan snapped. 

She raised an eyebrow. “You don’t think so? She spent her life studying him. She dedicated herself to the fight against him. If you believe in good and evil, then you keep evil close to your heart.”

“It’s not the same,” he insisted. “She did not labour under the illusion that she could mend him.”

Zoe considered this, then met his soft blue eyes, perceived the resolution behind them. 

“May I ask you something, Jonathan?”

He nodded.

“When you first encountered him, what was he like?”

Jonathan blinked, clearly not expecting this question. “He was...aged. Infirm.”

“His aspect, yes. What about his spirit?”

He shrugged. “Primitive, at first, though in retrospect, I think it was affect.”

“And after he drank from you? He became more like you, presumably.”

Jonathan stiffened. “He is not like me. I am not like him. I am not...I could never…what are you saying, Zoe?”

She took both his hands, smoothed her taloned thumbs over his knuckles. “I think it’s worth considering that his iniquities do not come from his metaphysical condition. I think they come from his humanity.”

“That is a horrifying thought,” Jonathan said, gently pulling his hands away. “You’re suggesting that he modelled his cruelty on my blood.”

“No,” Zoe said. “No, of course not. He’s had centuries to consume human folly. But I do think he absorbed some of your self-sufficiency, and your cleverness. You brought him Hume, Smith and Mill into his mind. You brought Austen, Shelley and Wilde into his heart. You taught him comedy. You gave him a capacity for play, which I believe he understood through your physical, spiritual relationship with Wilhelmina Murray.”

“Don’t talk about Mina,” he snapped suddenly, pulling his hands away and she saw a hint of fang under the corner of his lip. Then he closed his eyes, fighting down the rage and the pain. “I’m sorry.”

She put her arm on his shoulder and moved closer to him. “It’s in you, Jonathan. It’s in every person of character. But what gave you the strength to risk your own life for another’s, to end it altogether…it is the same force of will.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“If you want to become part of this age, and I hope that you do, you need to understand that the appetite one sadistic monster will never encompass the brutality of the human species.”

He stared helplessly at her. “How can I understand? How can anyone understand? The word “genocide” wasn’t invented in my lifetime. And what is Dracula if not a one-man genocide?”

She sighed. She didn’t know if she had an answer for that. “I know.”

“Then why?” Jonathan demanded. “Why do you humour him? Why do you condescend to such regard of him? How does his presence enhance your struggle between good and evil?”

Zoe took his face in her hands, looked into his inflamed eyes. “Because I’m going to live forever and I can’t afford to entertain moral absolutes. I can only do what I can do. My influence over him is indirect --”

“You love him,” he accused. “You really do. No, you adore him. Good god, Agatha.”

“My name is Zoe,” she said coldly. “Agatha thought she could defeat him with God’s mandate. But God is dead, and so are we. Do you know what that means?”

“No,” he said desperately. “Zoe --”

“It means we have almost nothing left to fear,” she said softly. “Except an eternity without love.”

Jonathan blinked. He straightened, and considered her with a frown on his face. “You believe he loves you?”

She smiled sadly. “You believe it, too.”

“Then he fears you.”

“More than anything.”

Jonathan slipped off one glove, and reached for her, letting his fingers glide over the scar on her throat, so much more delicate than his own, applied with so much more care. His tongue moved over the flat ridges of his front human teeth. She could see the violence in his gaze as he considered the possibility. Then, she saw him reject it. He wouldn’t harm her, not for Dracula’s sake, not for anyone’s.

“You’re not like him,” he said firmly, his human aspect reasserting itself.

“No,” she agreed. “My evil belongs to me.”

“What will you do now? With the Harker Foundation.”

“Ah,” she said. “I have a slate of experiments I want to develop. Methods and tests that will help us subsist without spreading the condition.”

“I would be honoured to assist in any way,” he said, bowing his head. "They have treated me with such unnecessary consideration."

She knew he meant it. She also knew, if he didn’t, that he craved live prey, that his ennui would eat at him until he was finally able to take blood with his own fangs. 

She sniffed the air. “The sun will rise in an hour. Are you close to home?” 

He nodded. Then: “is it true you can day walk?”

Her eyebrows rose. “Who told you that?”

Jonathan smiled guiltily. “Arthur.”

“I can for a few hours at a time, in direct sunlight. Longer if the weather conditions are overcast.”

"Through sheer willpower?"

"Only if I have fed...generously.”

She stared at him, trying to silently impart the definition of generous. To break his delusions. He seemed to receive the silent communication, for he bowed his head in submission. Then, he raised his eyes to her.

“I can’t be his bride,” he said finally. “I hate him too much.”

“That would not make you unique among brides the world over.” 

He laughed bitterly. Then, as she embraced him, he wrapped his arms tightly around her, clinging desperately to her. When she touched his face with her palm, he breathed in sharply, both startled and stimulated by the contact. 

Then she kissed his mouth, chastely at first. He restrained himself at first. Then he kissed her back, probing with the tip of his tongue in an almost innocent way. Then he groaned as she opened to him, giving him the full 21st century treatment, putting a torch his Victorian modesty. Then she gently pushed him back, and he sighed, something collapsing inside him.

“He’s waiting for you, isn’t he,” he muttered bitterly. “And you’re going to kill someone.”

“I might. I might not.” 

“Then you should go.”

She kissed him swiftly, then stared into his eyes, holding his gaze. “It’s not hate he fears, Jonathan. It’s indifference.” 

He stared back at her, blue eyes bright with unshed tears. “I’m doomed.” 

\--

“Did you eavesdrop?” 

Vlad Dracula considered his bride as he leaned back against the park bench, his arms spread out along the back rest. He shrugged, and he smiled in the way that was really a sneer.

Then he rose and stood over her, one articulate black eyebrow cocked. “I liked the bit about my humanity.”

He wasn’t expecting it when the back of her hand flashed out, her knuckles biting into his cheekbone hard enough to fracture. He tasted his own blood, and felt a crack in his neck vertebra as his head turned from the force of the blow. 

Astonished, he turned to look up, but she was already walking away.

“Zoe,” he called after her, hating the desperation in his own voice. Then he growled. “Get back here.”

But she was gone. Disappeared, somehow, completely absent from his vision and his other senses. Then, another scent, traces of lust, of fear, caught his attention. He raised his nose and sniffed at the air. No heart beat, but the pulse of hatred was strong. Vlad smiled as he reflected on Zoe’s words.

_Yes. Doomed._


	2. Inside

Jonathan Harker arrived at his flat a few minutes ahead of sunrise. It had been assembled for him by the foundation. It was an antique, according the lights of this era, but to him, it felt contemporary. There were modern convenience, including security and appliances, but the oriental carpets, the horsehair sofa, the fine wooden furniture, that was all familiar to him, especially as some of it had once belonged to him and his family.

He knew at once as he passed the threshold that he was not alone. The electronic hum of his flatscreen television impacted his eyes and eardrums before he could quite make out the details or the sounds. He was utterly unsurprised when he saw who it was occupying his easy chair, argyll-stockinged feet propped up on the old ottoman. 

“What are you doing?” Jonathan said, feeling more contempt than fear. 

Dracula indicated the Indian players running around on the screen.

“I’m watching the cricket, obviously,” he said in a sulky tone. “What does it look like?”

In fact, he seemed sincerely interested in the game now playing out on the television. Jonathan had a sublimely ironic moment of kinship: Dracula too was fascinated by the invention. All inventions. It was a different world for both of them. 

Then Jonathan snatched the remote of his hand and shut the TV off. “Would you mind getting out, actually? Especially as you haven’t been invited.”

Dracula’s black eyes moved up to him, and Jonathan felt a shiver pass through him as they appraised him. 

The elder vampire licked his lips. “You’re looking plush, Johnny. Diet going well, then?”

“Stop it,” Jonathan snapped, suddenly too fatigued and too enraged to be frightened any more. 

Dracula frowned at him, moving closer, intrigued as Jonathan stood his ground.

“Stop what, Johnny?”

“Everything,” Jonathan sneered. “Stop calling me that. Stop speak my language like you understand it. Stop affecting my mannerisms. Stop pretending you exist at all, that you aren’t just a nightmare dressed up in...in…”

He fell off, and suddenly the fear returned to him. He took a step back, catching the edge of the broad dining room table that he never used for dining.

“In human skin?” Dracula suggested. 

“I’ve seen the real you,” Jonathan hissed, trying to control his shaking. “Count Dracula is just a degraded, subliterate ruin.”

“It’s almost like you want that to be true,” Dracula murmured as though injured by the words. “Does that mean you are then the naked, gibbering creature I found on my mountaintop six months ago?”

Jonathan hesitated. He pulled away when Dracula reached for his hand. The vampire looked reproachfully at him. 

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, and there was something cloying in his voice. Like the sweet scent of rotting flesh, a bouquet that had defined the prison of Jonathan’s own body for so long, and it made him want to retch. 

Silent, still shaking, he allowed Dracula to take his hand, to pull him gently towards the closet that Jonathan never opened. He tugged the door open, revealing the full length mirror inside of it. Jonathan flinched, but when he opened his eyes, the reflection only showed two men separated by a span of ten years, well groomed and handsome in very different ways. 

“Nothing to be afraid of.” Dracula said. “Aren’t we aesthetic?” 

Jonathan touched his face, just to make sure that he wasn’t seeing things, that his flesh was not the morbidly sunken countenance that had rebuilt itself out of its tattered remains. Then Dracula’s hand, which had been resting on Jonathan’s shoulder, now slid down, clawed thumb and forefinger pulling apart the top button of Jonathan’s burgundy shirt. 

Jonathan shut his eyes, hoping the vision would vanish, hoping the feeling of tightness in his groin would subside. Zoe’s kiss had already ripped open the wound of his dormant lust, but this wound went even deeper.

Dracula turned him around to face him. “Look at me, Jonathan.”

Jonathan opened his eyes, was immediately captured by Dracula’s black gaze, his covetousness, the smell of his stolen vitality. 

“It’s not the 19th century any more,” he said, and there was something low in his voice, dark, bittersweet, a much more attractive flavour to Jonathan’s undeveloped palette than the decaying sweetness he’d tried before. 

“What is your point?” Jonathan said acerbically, calling on all of his nerve. 

“No more titles. No more noble houses,” the vampire replied. “My name is Vlad. Say it, soft _B_ sound. Almost sounds like _blood_ , doesn’t it?”

“Vlad,” Jonathan repeated, surprised by how natural and appropriate it felt. “What do you want?”

Vlad reached for him, and again Jonathan experienced the caress of the clawed hand on his cheek, the way he had so many years ago. “What I’ve always wanted. Companionship.”

“Why me?” Jonathan fought to keep the tears out of his voice. “Why did you do that to me?”

“Are we still on that?” Vlad said, rolling his eyes as though reduced to restating the world’s most obvious fact. “I needed Agatha, Jonathan. I had to have her. What I did to you was the least of what I would have done to get my fangs into her. I think you understand that better than you’re pretending.”

Jonathan looked away, suddenly overwhelmed with hurt. And it wasn’t the hurt he expected, the feeling of being crucified from the inside. Vlad sensed it, and he let out a very soft “ah” of understanding. He turned Jonathan’s face back, gently but firmly forcing him to make eye contact again. 

“Is it because I sacrificed you for her?”

“I don’t know,” Jonathan sniffed. “I don’t understand anything. I don’t understand why I feel this...”

“You’ve had her blood,” Vlad said. “Zoe’s blood. Is there anything finer than that?”

“She _loves_ you,” Jonathan said, feeling the disgust sour in his throat. 

Vlad took his shoulders, and moved him backwards until he felt the hardness cement wall at his back. Then he felt the press of his body, hard as adamant under the soft texture of expensive cloth. 

“Johnny,” came the dark whisper in his ear. “I know I trespassed against you, dear boy, and I came here to make it up to you. But I'll be honest. Now that I’m here, all I really want to do is _get back inside_.”

“Please,” Jonathan whimpered, not sure what he was pleading against...or for. 

“Not like that.” Dracula said, then kissed Jonathan’s ear. Then his mouth.

He kissed him the way Zoe had, only harder, his tongue plunging into his mouth, demanding tribute, sliding over Jonathan's teeth until they descended, sharp as daggers. Then, the taste of Vlad’s blood flooded his mouth. 

_Johnny, stay. You’re like me._

It stopped as soon as it had started, but Jonathan stood there, licking his fangs like the carnivore he was, trying to get every last drop. Then looked up into the eyes of his maker, glittering and eager to see the reaction to his gift. 

Jonathan grinned.

Vlad frowned "What?"

“She hit you like a naughty little boy.” Jonathan couldn’t help it. He started giggling. “Some warlord you are.”

“You only say that,” Vlad said archly. “Because this is the first time you’ve ever been married.”

Stung, Jonathan knew he was talking about Mina, and opened his mouth to reply. He was silenced as Vlad laid one fanged fingertip over his mouth. 

“Now, darling Johnny, I appreciate better than anyone that there are gaps in your education. So pay attention, won’t you.”

Jonathan wanted to speak, but couldn’t find his voice. He quivered as Vlad slid his shirt back over his shoulders. He waited for the feeling of tearing skin, but he only felt the sensation of Vlad’s mouth, kissing his sternum, kneeling as he moved lower, then lower still.

“What are you doing?” Jonathan gasped, his voice small and distant from himself. 

“When Zoe first did this to me, I thought I was dying. And I was _ready_ ,” Vlad said with a smile. “Age cannot wither Zoe, nor custom stale her infinite variety.”

“She’s angry at you,” Jonathan said, though his train of thought was in the process of being derailed. He hated himself, but the soft lips, tongue moving south of his navel was intoxicating.

“For the moment. But I think she’ll be returning to us before long.” Vlad’s eyes turned up to him, and his grin was wicked. “Should we welcome her together?”

Jonathan swallowed.

“I don’t think I’m ready to share you,” Vlad said. 

Jonathan hesitated. Then, shoving aside his common sense, his guilt, his fear, he wrenched his own trousers down, pulling his cock free. He was hard as stone. Vlad nuzzled against the side of it, his eyes fever bright as they looked up at him. Jonathan slid a hand into his crow-feather hair, tightening in it. 

“Do it,” his hissed, unable to stand it. He shuddered in every fibre of his body as Vlad took him into his mouth, then his throat. He seized Vlad’s clawed hand as it found its way up over his belly and gripped it in his own. 

“Oh my god,” he breathed. “Oh, christ. Oh, god, don’t stop.”

And Vlad didn’t. He applied his prodigious new erotic knowledge and conveyed it to Jonathan’s blank slate. Unburdened by the need to breathe, he swallowed convulsively around Jonathan’s cock, taking him so deep his nose was pressed into the younger man’s ginger pubic hair. 

Jonathan twitched, arched, thrusting down into his maker’s throat. He lost track of time as his Vlad sucked him, licked him, kissed and caressed him. Finally, when Jonathan couldn’t stand it any more, he cried a silent, a desperate plea for mercy.

Vlad rose, red mouth wet with saliva, licking his lips. He held out his arms and allowed Jonathan to disrobe him, sighing as Jonathan’s hands found his body, moved over his skin. He tilted his head back as Jonathan’s lips kissed his throat, tongue seeking the vein, but Vlad did not yet allow him that pleasure: he wasn’t done taking his own. 

He lifted the younger man on to the broad table, using one hand on his chest to push him back. He fixed his eyes on him, his expression serious, his mouth and chin flushed. 

_Do you want this?_

Jonathan hesitated. Then, slowly, unable to stand the agony, he nodded, and watched as Vlad spit into the palm of his hand and reached down. 

Jonathan arched as Vlad pushed his legs apart, lubricated his own cock and slid it into him, groaning. Jonathan gripped the head of the table as the elder vampire cried out, his self control, his dominance gone from him. Together they fucked like mortal men, familiar and human, though Jonathan had never before experienced anything this in his mortal life. Finally Vlad tilted his head back, an invitation. 

Jonathan sank his fangs into the pale flesh, moaned against Vlad’s throat as blood pulsed into his mouth. Such a complicated flavour, with so much steely brightness to it, like sun on a razor’s edge. With human joy, a hunter’s passion, the contemplation and attraction to danger that tasted of the Van Helsing line. Most of all he tasted of Dracula. His love of carnage, of chaos, of killing was all intact, only they had grown in scope. Jonathan should have found the flavour offensive, but now, blood spilling into his mouth, he admitted the attraction. Then he tasted himself, his legacy, his own deepest self. 

_Didn’t you break your toys as a child to see how they worked?_

_You shouldn’t have broken me._

_I was a child._

_Now you’re grown?_

_I didn’t say that._

Jonathan, unable to glean more from the closing wound, fell back against the table. Vlad withdrew from him, working Jonathan’s cock with one hand. Jonathan reached for him, closed his hand around the pale shaft with its standing purple veins. They came together, gasping, panting as though either of them needed breath. 

Naked, still erect, Vlad carried him to the small, elegant bedroom. Before long, Jonathan was whimpering with pleasure as the monster kissed the back of his neck, driving himself deeper into his victim, sharp taloned fingers curled around his again-hard cock, stroking him languidly. 

Jonathan watched in a haze, fascinated by this view, how similar his penis looked to Vlad’s, totally different than the one he had been so familiar with in life. Same paleness, flushed head, dark veins. When he came, it was thick, reddish clear, and abundant. The orgasm lasted far longer than any he’d experienced as a mortal.

Vlad’s lips touched his throat. 

_I want your blood, Jonathan Harker._

“Yes,” he cried. “Please.”

The fangs slipped gently into his throat, and the pain was delicious. He arched in ecstasy, coming again, harder than before. 

“Fuck,” he said, using the word for the first time in his life. “Oh god. Drink me.”

He felt Vlad shudder with orgasm, teeth still in Jonathan’s throat. He felt himself go slippery between the thighs with the release. His limbs relaxed, and his entire body slackened. He could not remember feeling this calm. The soporific effect of his maker’s bite had spread through his body, and he was grateful for it.

“Look at me,” Vlad breathed. 

Jonathan, sluggishly, turned to face him. His face was the face he knew, sensuous, strongly featured, black eyed. It softened by the parting of his lips, his bedroom eyes. Irises ringed in red, but not changed. Fangs visible, but not fully unsheathed. His expression was rapt, almost hypnotized. Was this what Zoe saw when he looked at her? 

“I hate you,” Jonathan said. Then again, _I hate you,_ with even more desperate need, his voice stolen from him by the full onset of morning. Then, his own deathly slumber, soft and velvet darkness, pulled him into its familiar embrace. 

Vlad’s mouth pressed against his cheek, whispering against his skin. “It’s a start, Johnny.”


	3. The Buried Bride

_Darkness. Wet, enfolding darkness. That was the last thing she remembered as the chains dragged her down, down with the peasants, down with the abbott and the sisters. Down into the mud, which made common their grave. Even unto her last, dwindling breath, Justine hated them. When she screamed, the water filled her mouth, filled her lungs, possessed her so totally that she did not know the moment of her death._

“My goodness, you are a beauty, aren’t you.”

Dr. Harriett Cooke was careful as she peeled the dried mud away from her subject. The body had been spotted by a mudlarker with a metal detector who at first believed he had found a wig blonde wig, peeking up from under dried plates of mud. 

When the French investigative authorities had tested the environment and established that the body was of historic rather than forensic value, they agreed to release it to her department at Durham University. Their French sister college had a very good anthropologist, but she was assisting in a mass grave operation, so Cooke had the care of this new discovery.

She was the most perfectly preserved bog mummy she had ever seen, which was strange. The report claimed that she had been found in a dried up riverbed, which seemed hardly possible given the signs. Cooke had several mud and vegetation samples currently in testing, but she couldn’t wait to start unmasking her new patient, as she thought of her. 

Little by little, using the softest of brushes, her dexterous hands cleansed the body of detritus. The skin, as expected for any specimen of this anaerobic antecedence, was tanned almost black, but there was substance to her body that suggested flesh, and bones beneath - again, unusual. But it was her face that fascinated Cooke. It was queenly and graceful, with high brow, delicate cheekbones, a straight nose, and a mouth that had somehow retained its sensual plumpness.

Then there was the hair, long wavy gold hair that was so lifelike that it didn’t seem quite real. Cooke had coiled it and bagged it so that it rested next to the head. 

Cooke went to her iPad and, using a stylus so she wouldn’t have to remove her gloves, made a few notes. Then, she slipped a bluetooth headset into one ear and turned it on. 

“Subject is female, approximately 165 centimetres, weighing 42 kilos at the time of removal, and estimated to have died in the place of discovery not later than 1800. No indication of exterior trauma, so presumed cause of death is drowning, pending a full toxicology.” 

Cooke turned back to her subject, taking a dentist mirror and, with infinite care, ran it over the lower lip.

“Subject retains all front adult incisors with minimal wear, suggesting subject is not more than twenty years of age. Stature makes it unlikely subject is less than eighteen years.”

Cooke turned again to set the mirror aside, then went to shuck off her exam gloves so that she could operate her tablet. As she unlocked it, she heard -- she wasn’t sure what it was. A breeze? A brush rolling on the tray? She looked up.

Her exam table was empty. She dropped her tablet, and didn’t notice as it shattered on the hard floor. She walked like one in a trance, reaching out with a shaking hand and coming into contact with the cold steel. She lifted her eyes and saw. 

The creature’s eyes were blue, the brightest clear blue she had ever witnessed, round with astonishment. Cooke tried to swallow the knot in her throat, but she couldn’t. This could not be happening. This had to be some kind of joke. Some kind of prank. 

But Dr. Harriett Cooke knew that it was not, because she had handled human remains for her entire professional life, and she knew a dead person when she saw one. And this one, standing, staring in fright, her skin like patent leather and her long blonde hair swinging free, had been just as dead as any other dead thing for the past five hours Cooke had spent examining it.

“ _Ce n'est pas le feu?_ ” the thing asked. The voice that came out of it was nervous and girlish, and yet refined. 

“You mean the light?” Cooke ventured, and she was proud to hear no quivering note in her voice. “No, it’s just LED.”

She touched the exam light with her palm as though to show: no heat. Then she skidded back on her heels as the woman, the creature, moved to imitate her. 

“El-ee-dee.” She giggled as she touched the light.“ _Ça ne me brûle pas_!”

“Who are you?” Cooke said, suddenly unable to think of her as an animated corpse. Whatever she was, she had personhood. She frowned, her oily black brow creasing. Cooke repeated the question in French. 

“Ah,” she said. “ _Je suis_ Marquise de Savoie, Justine de Comtois.”

Cooke stared, not entirely sure how this statement was any more or less ludicrous than the apparent resurrection of one of her specimens, but something about it made her unable to respond. 

Then, the woman, the Marquise, she supposed, turned her head and pointed to a mirror that was bolted to the supply cupboard. “Who is she? She is very ugly.”

_Oh lord. She doesn’t know._

“Madame,” Dr. Cooke said moving slowly around the table towards her. “Listen to me…”

Then the woman said a word Cooke didn’t understand. She tried to repeat it back: “Drakouleh?”

“He is foreign, though he speaks French like one of us,” the woman said proudly. “It is the family name. He a prince of the blood in his country.”

Cooke blinked. _The undiscovered country?_

"Which...?"

“Wallachia.” 

“Ah.”

Then, the thing's crystalline blue eyes moved down, and her mouth fell open.

“What is it?” Cooke asked, feeling absurdly concerned. She followed the creature’s gaze, and saw. It was a tiny cut in her own index finger, no doubt sustained from brushing away the shards of the broken tablet from her trousers. 

“It’s nothing,” she said, trying to reassure the woman. But as she looked up, she saw that the blue gaze was suddenly less blue. Ruby red creeped in at the edges of her irises, and as the black lips drew back, Dr. Cooke saw the jagged row of fanged teeth, slick with saliva. 

She did not see the creature move. She only heard the shattering of glass and drywall as the exam table crashed into it. She heard the air rushing out of her windpipe as the teeth gnawed through it, felt the tongue sliding up into her jugular vein. She could not scream, or beg, or fight. The pain was incredible but she was paralyzed, a rabbit in the maw of a panther, one shake from death. 

Then, she felt the heaviness of her own body as she fell against the tile floor. Her vision dimmed, but the shape above her was still visible, not longer black, but pink. Pink and red. 

“I’m terribly sorry, Dr. Cooke,” came a considerate voice from the gathering darkness. “But I was positively famished.”

It was that same girlish voice, but was note-for-note Harriett Cooke’s own accent, as though the creature that had just killed her had also managed to acquire a degree in Received Pronunciation in the time it had taken her victim to hit the floor. 

“Toodaloo,” it said cheerfully as it stepped over her body. 


	4. The Witness

Zoe grumbled as strong hands shook her. 

“Come on, kiddo. We’ve got a live one.” 

She raised her head. “What time is it?”

“Half past 4,” Arthur said, checking his watch. “We need to move fast. Hungry?”

“When am I not.”

He sat down at the edge of the bed, and before she could do anything, he pulled out his razor sharp utility knife and nicked the inside crook of his elbow with it. He made a little sound that was half gasp, half sigh as she drank from him, sipping slowly. Over time, she had grown better at self control to the point where she could do this in unmonitored conditions, but it had taken careful practice. 

He was breathing steadily as she drew back, and she could tell he was mildly intoxicated, as he always was by the exercise. He’d collected a number of small scars on his inner arms, and she knew by the taste of his blood that he was anxious about how much he had come to enjoy being fed on. He hadn’t used the word “addiction” yet, but she was worried for both of them. 

She knew he was immune to the revenant strain, and it was possible he couldn’t be made a vampire either. They hadn’t discussed it, but they couldn’t go on not discussing it, if it was to remain a controlled habit. 

_I am not Vlad_ , she reminded herself as she pulled on her clothes. _He is not Lucy._

Ten minutes later, she was crouching in the passenger side of his Landrover. Against her wishes, he’d slapped diplomatic plates on the thing to get around traffic, but now with the sun low in the sky, she was grateful for the speed. When they arrived at the Foundation, Veronica Bloxham and Jack Seward were waiting for them.

“We’ve got a witness,” Jack said as he led them down to quarantine.

In the months since their last adventure, he had put on some muscle weight, had grown a beard, and had taken on the full time task of doctoring the mental health of their more lucid patients. If this witness was in quarantine, there was a possibility he would join Dr. Seward’s ward. 

Bloxham handed her an iPad as they walked, and Zoe read the thin details, then handed it back.

“We’re supposed to get a call any time a well preserved body is registered into any scientific faculty.”

“This one came from France,” Bloxham explained. “It was a last minute handoff.” 

“That’s me, I suppose,” Arthur said with a yawn. “What do you need?”

“All of it,” Bloxham said briskly. “When, where. There was one casualty that we know of, Dr. Harriett Cooke.”

“Got the details?”

Bloxham handed him a sheaf of paper. “She’s gone to the medical examiners, so please get a move on. Everything you need is there.” 

“Lovely,” Arthur said, then looked at Zoe. “Will I see you later?”

“I don’t think so,” she said with a sad smile. She didn’t need to say why, and he knew better than to complain. He peeled off from their little group, and went to go see about Dr. Cooke’s remains. 

They entered a wing that was at first glance exactly like any hospital wing, except that it was underground, built into a converted car park and surrounded with one-way, vampire proof glass. In the single room, an ordinary looking man of south Asian descent lay in bed, his neck bandaged, blood running into his arm through an IV that was hooked up to a machine Zoe had designed herself. Its purpose was to circulate the fresh blood supply while draining off the old, in hopes that the vampiric pathogen would not infect the patient.

It was still a new invention and she had not yet been able to fully prove the concept, but perhaps this man, Matthew Anand, would be her proof. Bloxham went in to speak to him. She felt Jack at her shoulder, his nervous tension palpable. She could smell the blood under his skin, and for an instant she was tempted, but only an instant. Jack had already opened his veins for her enough.

“He’s a cab driver,” he said, looking through the glass. “Two children, a wife. We’ve told them the usual story, let them skype.”

“Good.”

He held up a vial, a sample of his blood. “Will this be enough?”

She nodded. Then she took the vial, uncapped it, and drank it in one swallow. 

_“Don’t mind me,” she said as she got into the back of this, the taxi cab of Matthew Anand’s blood. “Just go about your business as though I’m not here.”_

_“I was saying to them,” Anand continued, as though interrupted. “This lady. This girl, gorgeous like you wouldn’t believe, flagged me down.”_

_Then, Zoe saw. The girl raised her hand, her body encased in a periwinkle blue crepe dress that brought out her pale blue eyes. Zoe had spent enough time around Vlad Dracula to know the cost and quality of the material, and she took a closer look as the girl got in beside her._

_“The city,” she said in a bored voice. She was lovely, just on the edge of womanhood, and had that youthful broodiness of a fashion model. Her lips were painted a deep red, and she lolled in the back of the cab with an air lazy arrogance._

_“That’ll be sixteen-twenty,” the cabbie said, only now daring to raise his eyes to his rearview mirror._

_“Sixteen-twenty what?” she asked, one golden eyebrow arching. “You mean money?”_

_“I do, yes,” Anand said, now very uncomfortable. Then, “you know what, it's fine, forget it.”_

_“No,” the girl said, leaning forward. “Tell you what. You help me find who I’m looking for, and I’ll reward you.”_

_She got out of the cab, then into the front seat before Anand could think to pull away. She poked the mobile phone clipped to his dash._

_“The last one I ate didn’t know,” she said sweetly. “But I bet you’re good at this.”_

_“She wanted me to find a man called Vladimyr Draculea. She said he was a prince of some kind, but wasn’t sure if he still used a title.”_

_“And?” Zoe prompted. “Did you find him?”_

_“Not as such,” Anand said. “I found an address for a V. Dracula, and a listing for a flat, but the number was disconnected, and it seemed the flat had been put up for sale.”_

_“How did she react to that?”_

_“I don’t remember,” he admitted. “The last thing I remember is…”_

_“The dashboard,” Zoe finished for him. “Hitting you in the face.”_

_“Then why do I have this?” he wanted to know, holding up his hand to his throat. “I did what she asked.”_

_“She wanted more,” Zoe said kindly. “We always want more. There’s no end.”_

_“Am I going to die?”_

_“I will try my best to avoid it.”_

_“Thank you.”_

_“Mr. Anand,” Zoe said. “Did she give you her name? Any name at all?”_

_“No,” Anand said. “I’m afraid not. But there’s dashcam footage. All the cabs have cameras now.”_

_“Where do I find it? Who can I call?”_

_“Here, I’ll write down the number for you.”_

\--

“What is it?” Vlad hissed into the phone. “The sun isn’t down yet, don’t you have any respect.”

Jonathan woke slowly to the sound of Zoe’s voice coming out of the ear speaker, her clipped tones absolutely merciless. 

“Stop sulking. I’m sending you something and I want you to look at it.”

Jonathan looked at him, felt himself shudder slightly as the memory of last night returned to him. Vlad reached out and stroked his face, though his eyes were dull with annoyance as he looked at the old clock above the lintel. 

“Fine.”

Naked, Jonathan followed Vlad out into the sitting room as he held the mobile phone in front of him. Then he dropped it on the table as though it burned him, and sat down in astonishment. 

The washed out footage was grainy and the angle slightly fisheyed, but none of it detracted from the appearance of the woman sitting in the back seat. Her rich blonde hair, pale blue eyes and dark red lips were all evident in spite of the camera’s limitations. 

Vlad slid the phone back, set it on speaker and looked down. “Her name is Justine de Comtois.”

Silence from the phone. Then an inhaled breath. “She was dug out of an extinct riverbed in France and brought to an English university last night.”

“I expect she’s been about since then,” he said dryly. 

“I need to see you. Will you be at Carfax?” 

Vlad fixed Jonathan with a questioning eyebrow. Jonathan shook his head. He wasn’t ready. 

“Not Carfax,” he said. “Whitby Abbey. 7 o’clock.”

Jonathan’s eyes moved again to the clock, this one a grandfather clock that had belonged to his living self. It had just passed quarter to six. 

Vlad’s mouth met his before he could speak. “Are you hungry, Johnny boy?” 

“Yes, I am,” he replied. “Who is Justine?”

“God, not you too.”

“Vlad.”

“She was a girl,” he said. “Of an inferior vintage. I tasted her, and got bored, and left her to her fate.”

“And she’s come back?”

Vlad took the mobile and looked at the screen. Then he dropped it again. “Little bitch.”

“Tell me about her,” Jonathan pressed.

Vlad’s eyes rose to meet his. He pushed his untidy black hair away from his face and sighed. “There were three.”


	5. The Sisters

_Versailles_

_It was a winter ball thrown to honour the birthday of one of the royal children, but that wasn’t the reason Dracula had come to the Hall of Mirrors. He had, of course, presented himself to the timid king and his dowdy Viennese wife, given his present list of titles, and provided a gift for the young Bourbon in question. Then he’d left them and their entourage, pleasing himself as he stalked the edge of the glittering dance floor._

_He watched them for a moment, these birds of paradise in their silk and taffeta finery, waltzing in time to a music that was so delicate, so playful, that he wished he could catch it on his tongue like a snowflake. He made a note to inquire about the composer._

_Dracula paused to consider himself in one of the tall, gilded mirrors set in columns along the interior wall. He was dark black velvet this evening, embroidered with red silk. He eschewed the foppish wigs of the time in favour of his own black mane, tamed and tied back for him by one of the innumerable hairdressers that served the locale. Versailles. Fairy tale kingdom full of fairy tale nobles. He missed the taste of warrior so much it ached in him. But there were new flavours to try every day, even if Enlightenment was, as a creature of darkness, natural anathema to him._

_“Who are you this time?” he murmured both at himself, and the gathering of powdered ornaments behind him. Then he turned, smiled at them all. They were charming, he decided. This little frosting of robe nobility was destined to melt before long, and then the world would find out which if any of them proved to be the true steel. As for Dracula, he would forgo the pleasure of their blood until he could make a clean kill, away from the court._

_He moved on through the ballroom until he discovered what he was looking for in a side gallery._

_The boy was small, perhaps five years old, but he was upright and alert, and looked at the pictures with more than superficial interest. As Dracula watched, the child moved to the side, flanking one of the gilded frames in order to look at the subtle elevations and structures of the varnished paint._

_His little frock coat was a rich but sombre grey, a perfect match to that of his mother, who now joined him at his side and bent down to point something out to her young son. Her hair was dark, gathered under a transparent dark veil that fell across her face. Even so, her long black lashes and large hazel eyes were visible, adding youth to her face despite the lines of recent grief. They would fade, he hoped._

_“She didn’t want to come,” said a voice next to him._

_He turned to see a woman of the same colouring and grace, perhaps ten years older and, gowned in golden taffeta. Her dark hair had acquired a few streaks of grey, but she it was her own and she wore it in proud, artful curls piled on her head._

_“You must be the man she spoke of,” she said with a smile, tapping her powdered chin with her folded fan. “The one who wrote when Viktor died.”_

_“Madame,” Dracula said, bowing at the waist. “You have the advantage of me.”_

_She did not curtsey, but looked him up and down with a discerning eye. Then, she relented._

_“I am the Comtesse La Tour d’Auvergne.”_

_Dracula bent and kissed her hand. “I have the honour to be the Comte Drăculea de Wallachia, among other titles.”_

_“Indeed,” she said playfully. “Your French is exquisite, monsieur.”_

_“I have had many very good teachers,” he said with a smile, pausing to admire the lady’s graceful throat and proud bosom._

_“My husband is about her somewhere,” she said, as though referring to a beloved poodle. “I expect we’ll meet him before long. But first, please, tell me of your interest, Comte Drăculea.”_

_He offered his arm and she took it. Together they walked the margin of the room._

_He nodded towards the woman and her child. “Tell me first about the lady’s husband.”_

_The comtesse raised an eyebrow. “Ought I?”_

_“I am not here for dead men’s shoes,” he assured her. “It is a personal connection.”_

_“I wasn’t aware Viktor was a man of any connection.”_

_“Neither was he.”_

_The comtesse sighed. “He was killed in a duel. Who knows about what, the silly man had never fired a shot in his life.”_

_“Pistols,” Dracula sniffed in disdain. “What was he in life?”_

_“A merchant. A book peddler. That’s how he got over the wall, you see,” she said, nodding towards the widow and her child. “Used to slip notes into her school books. He wrote her a poem every week for five years. Finally, they eloped.”_

_“How did your family take that?”_

_She rolled her eyes. “You can imagine, my dear. Father was always exceedingly delicate about his Vendôme honour and it just about killed him. Best thing for him, really, he was a brute.”_

_“And you have the keeping of her now?”_

_The comtesse nodded. “Of course. Would you not do so much for your beloved sister?”_

_He smiled sadly. “I had but one, and did not have time to know her well before I was forced to leave her behind.”_

_The woman smiled. “I understand.”_

_Dracula moved closer to her, and bent his head down next to her ear. “May I know your Christian name, Madame?”_

_“I am Jeanette,” she said, and there was a well-experienced invitation in her eyes._

_“And your sister.”_

_“Isobelle,” she said. “And…”_

_Dracula tilted his head at this hesitation. “You have another sister?”_

_Jeanette rolled her eyes, and flicked open her fan, signalling the dismissal of an unseemly topic._

_“Yes,” she said haughtily. “But you’ll see for yourself soon enough, I’m sure. She quite likes being seen.”_

_Dracula thanked her, and left her with a bow, then went to offer his compliments to the forsaken Isobelle._

_“Madame d’Sárkányszív,” he said, bending to kiss her hand. “We have corresponded.”_

_“Of course, Comte Drăculea.” Her sadness seemed to make her proof against charm, but she was courteous nonetheless. “My son, Georges.”_

_The boy offered a short bow, then looked up with wide dark eyes and a burning, intelligent curiosity. His grief was not as heavy on him as it was on his mother._

_“For Saint Georges,” Dracula said with a smile, crouching down to his height. “He who slays the dragon.”_

_“But my surname means the dragon's heart,” Georges said. “My father thought it was a very funny joke.”_

_“Oh, indeed. And what do you think, little chevalier?”_

_Georges examined Dracula with feigned diffidence, but then decided he liked his face. His face broke into a smile. He put his little hands up and growled._

_“You’ll scare me half to death, Saint Georges.” Dracula put a hand over his heart in mock fright. “Go and look at the pictures while I speak to your mother.”_

_The boy seemed pleased to have a reason to leave the two sombre adults. Isobelle Sárkányszív wasted no time as she turned to him, her fine features now hardening into suspicion._

_“What do you want, Comte Drăculea?”_

_“Please call me Vladimyr,” he said gently. “And perhaps the terrace would be better.”_

_“I don’t think it’s quite appropriate,” she said with a little sniff._

_He offered his hand. After a moment of hesitation, she took it and allowed herself to be led out into the calm, chill moonlight._

_“Viktor Sárkányszív is one of my descendents,” he said quietly, eyes moving over the untouched_   
_snow._

_“You mean one of your relations.”_

_“Descendent,” he said, turning his eyes to her. “An illegitimate Hungarian branch, but blood nonetheless.”_

_“That’s not possible,” she said, frowning at him. “You’re--.”_

_“Three hundred years old, and then some,” he said calmly. “I am vampire. Don’t be afraid.”_

_“I’m not afraid,” she said, arching a brow. “You’re mad.”_

_“Good enough,” he said. “I’ve already set up a trust for you and your son. It is administered from England and is under your sole control. You should take him there, or even America. Matters are deteriorating here.”_

_Now she was alert, her sadness set aside. “I see no deterioration.”_

_“The centre cannot hold. This regime is insolvent and doomed, either through foreign incursion or internal rebellion,” he told her, indicating the glut of humanity inside the palace. “But you’re an intelligent woman, you’ll know when it’s time.”_

_“And what should I be expected to offer in exchange for this consideration?” Isobelle wanted to know, her sharp eyes biting into him._

_“Nothing. Only know this, Isobelle,” he said as he took her face in his hands and looked into her dark eyes. “Nothing that happened was your fault. Nothing that is going to happen will be your fault.”_

_Something inside of her relaxed, and she seemed to accept his words, though he could tell she was unsure of their meaning. Gently, he kissed her forehead, and left her there to ponder._

_“Wait,” she said suddenly. “Monsieur Comte.”_

_Dracula turned, and waited for her to speak._

_“What is going to happen that will not be my fault?”_

_He said nothing, but smiled, put his hand on his chest, and offered her a deep bow. She regarded him imperiously for a moment, and then submitted to his silent instruction, and returned to the bright warmth of the gallery. He continued his way down the terrace, bored with the festivities now that his purpose was accomplished._

_He was about to order his carriage, when he encountered an interesting scene by the front entrance. A paunchy, intoxicated man of perhaps sixty, dressed in expensive wine-stained clothing was being loaded into a likewise expensive carriage with a coat of arms Dracula recognized._

_Then, behind him, a voice. “What were you saying to my sister?”_

_The tone wanted to be arch, but youthful, girlish sweetness made it pert. When Dracula turned to identify its owner, felt a little shiver of pleasure go through him, piquing his appetite._

_The girl was young, eighteen or nineteen, her golden hair, unbound from its ribbons and pins, cascaded down her shoulders. She reclined on a stone bench, her courtly decorum completely abandoned, and her blood red velvet skirts formed a nest around her tiny waist._

_Her eyes were a clear, crystal blue, and her features still had the last neoteny of youth, perhaps a year before she would grow into her queenly cheekbones. The blue veins pulsed under her skin, visible in her corseted breasts, and her admirable throat. His mouth watered instantly. He wanted her blood. He wanted to fuck her with his teeth, and he knew at once, unusually for him, that he wanted to be inside her while he did it._

_“I am afraid, Madame,” he said. “That was private business.”_

_She stood up, brushed down her skirts, and walked up him, then gave him a disdainful curtsey and offered her hand. “I am the Marquise d’Savoie, Justine d’Comtois. Tell me why you were talking to my sisters.”_

_“No,” he said, smiling against her knuckles as he left a lingering kiss on them. “Shouldn’t you be joining your husband, Madame Marquise?”_

_She looked at her old husband now keeled over his own knees in the back of the carriage, then turned back to Dracula._

_“I want to go with you,” she said, declaring it as though it was a fait accompli. “Take me.”_

Oh, yes, darling. 

_“But I am a stranger,” he protested, now grinning. “I could be a very dangerous man for all you know. What if your husband can't afford the ransom?”_

_“Hah,” she laughed, her face brightening like the breaking sunrise. “We can write the note together.”_


	6. The Paper Princess

“You’re late,” Zoe said as she made her way up the sloping path, her dark hair tossing in the breeze. 

Vlad watched her in silence from his lounging position against the abbey wall, feeling himself quicken as she drew nearer. Just the sight of her pleased him, as it always did, as it always had, even in former lives. He could not remember a time when he was not pleased to see Agatha, and suspected it had been the same for her. 

_I am coming to know you, Count Dracula._

_It would take a lifetime to know me._

He often wondered how different things would have been if he’d let them kill her aboard the Demeter. He had a very strong suspicion she would have risen hungry, and had the maturity now to recognize that as his desire.

Zoe. This one so different. She was not a creature of pious self denial. She was a modern woman who took her pleasures for granted. So far, she had been a spectator in his killing, willing to drink the spoils of whichever morally appropriate victim he chose, but he anticipated the night when she would start taking lives without his guiding hand. 

“Are you going to hit me again?” he asked. “Just as a point of interest.”

“That depends,” she said coldly. “What did you do to him?”

Vlad grinned, showing the edges of his teeth. Then he reached into his pocket, and offered her his mobile. “You can ask him, if you want.”

“You are such a child,” she said, turning away to look out on the dark water. “Unbelievable.”

He went to stand behind her, then bent to her ear. “Jealous, darling?”

She turned to face him with a scowl and he held his hands up as though to ward off her anger. Then, when she didn’t raise her hand, he moved in and kissed her. After a moment’s denial, she kissed him back, fingers tangling up in the thick wool of his turtleneck. 

He held her against him, stroking her hair. He knew she too was remembering their first adventure here in this graveyard. She’d been somewhere between death and undeath, still tasting and smelling like mortal flesh to him. He was grateful for that time, grateful his first experience of her body had been so...human.

She pushed him gently away, and walked a few paces, touching one of the scrolling headstones that was so weathered as to be totally unreadable. 

“Justine d’Comtois,” she said. “Was executed by drowning in a tributary of the Loire that is now extinct. She was, according to what little record remains, captured while attempting to flee her estates in Savoy. The prison convoy was bound for Paris was diverted and the noble prisoners were wrapped in chains and drowned instead of being sent to the guillotine.”

“Whose record?” he wondered.

She sighed. “An adjutant of Jean-Baptiste Carrier wanted to test new methods intended to keep the remains from surfacing. He wrote a report, it’s archived.”

“Revolutionaries,” Vlad said. “With milk in their veins.”

“You prefer beheading?” she said with a smile. 

“I’m fine with beheading,” he said, now smiling. “Provided the beheader has the grace to do the act with their own hands. This whole idea of mechanizing the process is exactly the problem with the world. It has forgotten how to shed blood.”

“You think so,” she said, and now he could tell she was repulsed. “You think it’s better to drive pikes up your own people and put them on display.”

He shrugged. “It was a phase. Would you say that it’s better to kill in war? To use gas chambers? Bullets? Bombs? I am curious, Zoe, to your 21st century mind, which is the most authentic way to kill?”

She turned away. Then shivered as he stroked the back of her neck. 

“Look at them,” he murmured, indicating few mortals game enough to brave the weather as they wandered the paths below. “All of them have death inside. Not all of them have a good death. If you try, you can eat well and kill well.”

“How?” she demanded, and it heartened him. “How do I judge, execute, and remain myself?”

“Choosing wisely,” he said. “Take a few drops from many, and a large swallow from a very few.”

“If I do that, why should I bother with killing at all?” she wondered, but almost more as a question to herself. 

“Because it’s in your nature,” he told her. “Because it feels good. Even your Arthur knows it. He was a soldier.”

She turned, pressed herself into his arms and shuddered, now surrendering to the realization. In her attempt to remain humane by feeding on a kept human, she’d been undone by her choice of human. Holmwood was a warrior, a professional killer, and as canny as Vlad himself had been on the field of combat, something of which he very much approved. Now Zoe, who was already a woman demonstrably prepared to accept casualties, knew the taste of war. 

“How do I choose?” she wanted to know. “How do I know?” 

“Practice,” he told her. “Look.”

He pointed as though sighting down his arm at a couple below, in the midst of some kind of disagreement. She followed her gaze, and under his direction, picked up on the subtle tells as the man pushed gripped his partner’s arm, then pushed her away. 

Zoe frowned. “I don’t want to become like him.”

“Diversify,” he told her. “Think of it like eating a balanced meal. You’ve had your fruits and veggies. You’re allowed to indulge.”

“Not tonight,” she said. “You have some explaining to do.”

He took her by the shoulders and pulled her back, pressing his mouth against her ear. 

“I want you first,” he said, his voice full of demanding need. “I want to feel your immortal body under me. So stop being angry at me.”

“I don’t see what my being angry with you has to do with the matter,” she said, turning an arched eyebrow on him. Then when he looked at her, she smiled a thin smile, as though to say _come and get me, then_.

\--

They were hardly in the door of her apartment when he seized her by the waist, slamming her down on to the carpet hard enough to break mortal ribs. His hands tore her expensive shirt and jeans off her body, unwrapping her like a present. She was about to berate him when he pushed her legs apart and sank his tongue into her, growling against her skin.

“Fuck,” she cried out. Then again, louder and more strangled as he turned his head, opened her femoral artery with his teeth and drank from her, his thumb still on her clit. He steadied her as her hips bucked, rising from his feasting to watch her writhe in ecstasy, his fanged grin monstrous and crimson.

He slid off his turtleneck and let it fall, then undid his belt and trousers, peeling himself out of them as she waited for him, not breathing. He knelt between her legs, letting his hand stroke over her belly. He entered her slowly, made her feel every inch of him 

“Say it,” he purred, holding himself back.

“Dracula,” she begged, her nails cutting into his shoulder blades. He pulled her against him, gasped as her fangs went into his jugular. 

_That’s my girl._

\--

_“Comte Vladimyr Drăculea d’Wallachia,” she said, reeling off the title as though testing its venerability. “Where is Wallachia?”_

_“Romania,” he said, not really listening attentively to her words. He was more interested in the delicate tracery of veins visible above the neckline of her red, red gown._

_“Are you rich?”_

_“Immeasurably.”_

_“Do you have a wife?”_

_“No,” he said, then grinned at her in the darkness of the carriage, knowing she couldn’t see his fangs. “I take a bride now and again but they never seem to last.”_

_“You are a murderer,” she said, clapping her hands together like a delighted child._

_He took her face in his hands and kissed her with sensual softness. He could tell by the way she sagged, by the smell of her anxiety, that she was as uninitiated as she was aroused._

_“And here I thought you were going to seduce me,” he whispered into her ear, letting his hand roam over the slope of her breasts, straining from the top of her corset._

_It was a short ride to his chateau, which was built into an elevation over top of an abandoned fort. He’d chosen one with an outer curtain, and after his custom, and the carriage trundled under the raised portcullis. The chateau was also backed by a tributary of the river Seine. Keeping his habitation near rivers was another one of his customs._

_She wanted to ask more questions, but her pretty little mouth ceased when he bent his head and dipped his tongue down into her cleavage, pressing his nose into her soft, perfumed flesh. She had a subtle spray of freckles over her chest and bust, and he kissed all of them, pausing to taste the warmth that pulsed under them._

_Once arrived, he did not let her feet touch the ground, but carried her from the grand entrance foyer to the threshold of his rooms. The chateau was as gilded and richly decorated as any royal palace but much of the finery remained under protective sheets, and he did not permit the blazing light of oil anywhere in his own quarters, the medieval prince in him preferring candlelight._

_He set her down on her feet, and began the slow, but enjoyable task of defrocking her, beginning with her red velvet overgown._

_“Justine,” he said, putting a Romanian accent on it, rounding out the first syllable. “Why do your sisters hate you?”_

_She shrugged. “I’m prettier than they are. I married better than they did.”_

_“And tonight yet your husband returns to an empty bed,” he said with a smile, undoing the ribbon stays of her dress with one languid pull after another._

_“He can’t do anything in it anyway,” Justine said with a sneer. “He tries, but I’ll sooner get a son by the parish priest.”_

_“Will you?” Dracula said, grinning._

_Justine had the grace to blush, dropping her eyes to his Turkish carpet. He laughed, lifted her head and kissed her mouth, lapping at her tongue with his, putting the slightest pressure on her lower lip with his teeth._

_“I’ll tell you what, Justine d’Comtois,” he said softly. “I won’t give you children. But I won’t let you die a virgin, either.”_

_Wearing nothing but a flimsy petticoat, hose and the brocade corset, she went to sit on the edge of the richly appointed bed he rarely used, and watched him with her head tilted, a curious marionette, as he slid out of his coat, black culottes, stockings and his lawn silk shirt._

_Her eyes moved over him covetously, resting finally on his erect cock. He could tell that her experience of male arousal was poorly lacking, because he had to press himself into her hand before she fully appreciated how hard he was._

_“Like this?” she murmured as he showed her how to stroke him, to please him._

_“Yes,” he breathed. “Like that.”_

_He worked quickly on her corset, unhooking it from the bottom up so that he could delay the view of her breasts for last. She was beautifully formed, narrow waisted, hips like a lyre, skin graced with a wider firmament of freckles than he would’ve guessed, each the same dusty rose as her nipples._

_“You were made for fucking,” he told her, drawing one knuckle under her fine golden pubic hair. “Delicious darling.”_

_“Then fuck me,” she commanded in that youthful attempt at authority._

_He was not gentle as he punished her for her insolence, but pushed her thighs open, filled his his hands with her ass and dragged her to the edge of the bed. He watched her expression go from pouty conceitedness to a two-toned bloom of pain and passion as he buried himself in her with one merciless thrust._

_She didn’t bleed which was just as well, he didn’t want to get distracted. After the first blow, he restrained himself, moving slowly inside of her, soothing her until she was in his rhythm, pulse beating in time with his thrusts. She came with something between a sob and a gasp, twisting her fingers in his sheets as her body reacted to it, involuntarily squeezing on him. After that, she was no longer interested in being passive. Now she was curious to know how to bring about the sensation again, so he set about to teaching her._

_She propped herself on her palms, wanting to watch him enter her, and flushed face and throat were so delectable that it took every ounce of restraint not to open her veins and bathe in her blood._

“You didn’t drink her?”

“She wasn’t ready,” he murmured.

_In his memory she was still under him, crying, begging for him to have mercy on her, release her, kill her, anything. Such a performer. He slapped her across the face just hard enough to stop her babbling, and those blue eyes blazed at him, absolutely astonished at his effrontery._

_“Listen, Justine, in spite of whatever namesake novel you may had read under the covers in your nursery, don’t play the ingenue with me. You don’t want any of those things.”_

_“Then what do I want?”_

_She made a noise of surprise, hardly perceiving the physical motion as she found herself now astride him._

_“Power,” he told her, running his clawed thumbs over her delicate hip bones. “You want to rule over men, and you must learn to wield it.”_

_“Like this?” she arched her hips, then rolled them, her lips parting and eyes closing as she took him in deeper._

_“Like that,” he agreed, taking her hands, threading his fingers through hers. “Yes…”_

_“Make me come again,” she whimpered. “Drăculea, I’m so close.”_

_“See? That’s better,” he told her._

_She clung to him as it hit her a second time. He held her, his mouth on her sternum, the pulse of her veins against his cheek, the fluttering of her beating heart so close he could taste it. But he resisted the urge to break the flesh. The night was long, and Dracula wanted to savour it._

“That’s not like you,” Zoe said, though she was half distracted by her effort to get the last of the blood from the wound she’d made in his throat. 

As she came out of the heavy subconsciousness of his memory, she realized they were in her bed. He had been watching her television while she drank from him, or rather, he was looking for something to watch because was flipping through the channels. 

She wanted to upbraid him for his inattentiveness but she decided instead to straddle him. Dark eyes moved up to her face.

“Why didn’t you drink her, Vlad?” she wanted to know. “You drank Lucy.”

“She wasn’t Lucy,” Vlad said, amused. “Lucy might have wielded power in that time but she had none in her own, except for her beauty. Justine...she was a vintage that wanted aging, and was worth waiting for.”

“So happened to her? How did she go from vintage to victim?”

"Victim indeed," he laughed softly, then stroked her cheek. “Surely you know your history better than that.”

She opened her mouth to retort but he kissed her, hard. 

“I’m hungry,” he told her. “So are you. Let’s go out.”

“And kill someone,” she said in a dull voice. 

“Yes. I’m in the mood for something young, dumb and blonde, aren’t you?”

“No,” she said, her ardor now considerably diminished. “You go.”

“Zoe, Zoe, Zoe,” he chided in that way of his that conveyed his disappointment in the form of pure mockery. “You know this hangup you have about taking human life is going to last as long as your mortal span of years has passed. Then all of your friends and loved ones will be dead, and you’ll just have me and Johnny.”

“And Justine, presumably,” she said, pulling her knees up to her chest. 

“Is that what’s bothering you?” he bent down to kiss her head. “Zoe --”

She took his hand. “I’m afraid for you. You can hardly control yourself on a good night.”

“But I have a lot of good nights, dear one,” he told her, captured her with his mouth for one more kiss. Then, before she’d even seen him move, her front door closed behind him.


	7. Incubus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: for some fairly graphic violence/sex combo stuff. 
> 
> Keep it in mind, I write the Dracula I found, so if you're looking for something that's warm and fuzzy, this is probably not the story for you.
> 
> The rest of you sick fucks, enjoy.

  
Arthur Holmwood sat in front of the dual monitors and replayed the footage again. It happened so quickly - a blonde blur coming down from the car park ceiling like a jaguar dropping on a hunter. Detective Inspector Andrew Moran’s blood sprayed on to the camera as the golden haired thing tore into his throat. Arthur covered his mouth. He’d seen some sights, especially since the Harker Foundation had taken him on, but the sloppiness demonstrated by this new member of London’s undead ranks was difficult to watch. 

He watched as she roamed around the still twitching body of her victim, divesting him of his shoulder holster and his pistol. She had to roll him over in order to get at it, and Arthur could clearly see the agonized face. He was still alive, but just. 

He shut off the monitor. “Christ.” 

From behind him, Detective Inspector Rachel Jones squeezed his shoulder. “You up to this?”

“I’ve seen a lot of friends go,” he told her. “Never like that.”

Jones sighed. “I still don’t know how it’s possible. Drew was just on his way out from the Old Bailey. Not on a case. Now half the force is out there looking for this thing.”

Arthur rose to his feet and he allowed her to lead him out of the screening room. It was a short walk across the road to the Foundation-owned hospital where Arthur had undertaken to have all London area vampire victims sent. 

The body of Moran was laid out on the exam table, his head raised by a block, his features mercifully set into peaceful sleep by a skilled hand, and his dark hair neatly combed. The bite in his throat was more of a tear, and had been stitched shut. 

The other two, a lawyer, and a clerk, both male, in their thirties, were already laid out on the storage gurneys. The cadaver fridge unit was slightly modified for the Foundation’s purposes - they included viewing windows, and had additional reinforcements added for the containment of the more active occupants. 

All of the men were of an age, and all of them had the same dark colouring. Black hair, strong features, dark eyebrows. 

“Squint and you can see it, “ Ronnie Bloxham said dryly as she entered the room. 

“Do you think she’s calling him out?” Arthur wondered. “Or just making mistakes.”

“All of them were near the Old Bailey,” Ronnie observed as she walked the length of the room, looking at each cadaver. “All connected to the legal profession, in one way or another.”

“Odd pattern,” Arthur said, looking down at his friend’s body, feeling his throat tighten. “Metro’s got surveillance up, I’ve got our team up on top of that. What else do we need?”

Ronnie shrugged. “Bait?”

“You think he’ll cooperate?” Arthur said dryly.

“Something doesn’t fit here,” Ronnie said as she surveyed the three dead men. “Dark hair, dark eyes, all found in the vicinity of the Old Bailey, all connected to the legal profession, all aged between 30 and 40. What doesn’t fit?”

“Dracula,” Arthur said. “By the time of his death he was longer in the tooth by a decade or more. So to speak”

“So what’s the message?” Ronnie wondered. “What’s in her mind?”

“Maybe it’s random,” Arthur suggested as he joined her by the table. “Maybe it’s subconscious. She’s got a type. Vlad himself is selective about his victims. Maybe she’s just got a taste for this particular brand.”

“It’s not random,” Ronnie insisted. “Don’t ask me how I know, I just do. There’s a message here. I just hope nobody else dies before we figure out what it is.”

\--

It had taken her so long to understand. She didn’t see his face, only the back of his dark head and his blue trench coat as he hailed a taxi, gone from her sight before she could do much about it. The bandaid had fallen from his finger, a casualty of some food preparation, an act that in and of itself was bizarre to her. In her time, servants did her cooking. Servants dressed her. Servants saw to every single one of her needs. Some even pleasured her, if she wanted it.

Justine had slid into the shadows to lick the little pad with its drop of dried blood. She knew it was disgusting but couldn’t stop herself, and even this past-date blood nourished her with tantalizing clues. Strange that this one should taste familiar, and more than one way. 

_It came to her in a daylight dream._

_Jeanette’s dying had taken an agonizingly long time. Still on her deathbed after three weeks, Justine wished the old baggage would just get a move on, so that she could be and out of mourning before the change of the season. Isobelle, of course, remained in mourning for her husband and probably would for the rest of her life._

_Justine lay indolently on one of Jeanette’s gilded sofas, looking up at the tasteful splendour. This grand old house would go to the committee, she supposed, which was a shame. According to their lights, she was no longer a marquise, but a “citizenesse”, a state of affairs that Justine would neither acknowledge nor allow to persist. Not if she had anything to do with it._

_Isobelle returned to the drawing room with their respective sons, one to a side. Dark haired Georges had grown since Justine had last seen him, and her golden haired son Jean-Martin, four years old, looking more handsome by the day._

_As she watched Georges take his cousin in hand, she was struck by a note of familiarity that felt more like deja vu than recognition. She could see Georges in six or seven years as a very formidable character. She was pleased by the kindness he showed to Jean-Martin, who was naturally very diffident with other children. Together they played some kind of folding paper game on the floor._

_Isobelle fixed her with a stern gaze. “You should come with us.”_

_“Out of the question,” Justine said calmly._

_“They’ll kill you, Justine,” Isobelle warned, as though to suggest she herself wasn’t amenable to that outcome._

_“They can try.”_

_“Jean-Martin, then. Let me take your son with us to England.”_

_Justine stared at her sister and contemptuous disbelief. “You really think I would allow him to be separated from me?”_

_“It’s for his own good,” Isobelle insisted, but Justine understood the subtext. Justine, the family slut. Justine the libertine. Get Jean-Martin away from her influence._

_Justine sighed in bored exasperation. Then, Jeanette’s footmen announced a newcomer:_

_“The Comte de Wallachia.”_

_And there he was, Vladimyr Drăculea, dressed in a dark red frock picked out with silver thread, his black hair tied with a black silk ribbon, his polished black boots making no sound except for the faint metallic click of his spurs as he walked towards the women._

_He smiled as he dabbed the corner of his mouth with a black handkerchief, tucked it away in his sleeve, and then made an elegant bow, reaching first for Isobelle’s hand and kissing it chastely._

_“Forgive me,” he told her. “I thought I’d pay my compliments to the lady of the house.”_

_“Of course,” Isobelle said, speaking with far more warmth than she had offered Justine. “This is my younger sister, Justine d’Comtois, Marquise of Savoy. Or Citizenesse Comtois, I suppose we must call her._

_“Oh, the Marquise and I have met before,” Drăculea said as he knelt down over Justine’s hand, the kiss on her knuckles slightly wet._

_She felt something tighten in her belly as his dark eyes met hers. Her body remembered him, her first, and now she found that wanted him very badly indeed, even after the passing of years._

_Justine enjoyed Isobelle’s annoyance as Drăculea didn’t bother to hide his appraisal of Justine’s throat and bust._

_“All is prepared,” Drăculea informed Isobelle. “You can leave any time, but if you want my advice, leave tonight. Rochelle is distracted with an uprising, and the road is clear.”_

_“Let me take Jean-Martin,” Isobelle pressed. “If something happens to you they’ll give him to some tanner to bring up in trade. In England he’ll be safe, and he’ll have an education. His titles will be respected.”_

_“There are,” Justine said stiffly. “Other countries besides England where my son can get an education and the respect he deserves.”_

_“Each to her own course, ladies.” Drăculea chastised with a smile, then turned to Georges. “Now, Georges, come here, I want a word with you.”_

_Georges rose from his paper folding, leaving his cousin to continue the attempt, and stood at attention before the Comte. “Yes,sir.”_

_“I want you to take care of your mother,” Drăculea told him. “Protect her. Honour her. You may not have my name, but you have my blood, and I expect you to be worthy of it.”_

_“Yes, sir,” Georges said solemnly, then bent to kiss Drăculea’s ring like a cardinal paying homage to a pope. “I swear it.”_

_“Thank you,” Isobelle said, then took her son’s hand. “Let’s go see Aunt Jeanette one more time before we leave.”_

_Drăculea escorted her and her son to the drawing room door. Justine couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she caught them both looking at Jean-Martin, so she had a guess. Then Isobelle curtsied low to Drăculea. He bowed again to her, and again kissed her hand. He then exchange bows with Georges, and shook his hand before seeing the pair off through the door._

_“So that’s it,” Justine said with a satisfied smile as Drăculea returned to her side. “I see the resemblance. But how can you be related to her husband? Viktor was such a...well, one does not want to say it.”_

_“Say what, Justine?” Drăculea said coldly, but she wasn’t intimidated._

_“A soft-heart,” she said. “He wasn’t hard enough for this world.”_

_“But you are,” he said with an arched brow. “Careful. Madame la Guillotine cuts through even the stiffest necks.”_

_“Have you seen it?” Justine wondered. “The national razor.”_

_Drăculea’s nostrils flared. “I don’t like to see blood wasted.”_

_“Quite.” Justine reached her hand out for her son. “Come here, Jean-Martin. It’s a long drive.”_

_“Permit me to escort you,” Drăculea said, offering his hand. “A lovely young woman such as yourself shouldn’t be travelling unguarded.”_

_“Oh, I’m hardly that,” Justine said with a smile._

_“Yes,” Drăculea said with a grin. “Your footmen appear to be speaking German with each other, rather conspicuously.”_

_“Fair enough,” Justine said, taking her son’s hand._

_Drăculea did not ride in the carriage with her, but favoured a black palfrey that kept up a very pretty gait beside them. It was another two hours before they made it to her chateau, which was likewise guarded by Germans made up to look French._

_“What are you up to?” Drăculea wondered as he brought his horse up to the carriage window. “Are you trying to lose your head?”_

_“If the committee wants to come get me, they’re welcome to try,” she said sweetly._

_He arched a brow. “I wonder that they haven't already if this is how you're carrying on.”_

_"I'll explain."_

_When they arrived at the chateau, a governess was there to take charge of her sleeping son. She kissed his golden head before letting him be taken, and wondered in her heart of hearts if she shouldn’t have accepted Isobelle’s offer. Then, as Drăculea lifted her cloak from her shoulders, the consideration was driven totally out of her mind._

_“Your husband?” he wondered, not concerned, just interested._

_“Not quite dead,” Justine said carelessly. “We used rouge to make his face up with pox, which has been very effective at keeping the committee men out of the grounds. These soldiers are of course meant to "hold the quarantine".”_

_“Very clever girl,” Drăculea purred, and Justine was reminded of their first and only night together, when he'd trained her in the art of fucking and spoke his approval in just such a tone._

_She could feel his gaze on her as he followed her up the sweeping staircase to her own rooms, which were well appointed and located on the opposite of the house from her husband’s. Her servants were all very well trained to accommodate her appetites, and so were untroubled by her occasional screams. Not that many men were up to making her scream._

_As soon as the doors were closed, Drăculea was on her, coming from behind to kiss her throat, to tease the fullness of her breasts with his fingertips over her corset. Deftly his hands moved, undoing the stays of her brocade gown._

_“The boy’s not your husband’s son, is he?” he murmured, and she could feel the smile against her skin._

_“Of course not,” she said without shame. “That won’t stop him from marrying into Vienna.”_

_“Nor you, I suppose,” he said as he pulled open the eyes of her corset, filling his hands with her breasts. She shuddered as he licked a line up her throat._

_“Look at me, Justine,” he commanded. She turned, obeyed, staring up into his dark eyes and waiting for him to do what she, thanks to his instruction, had done to so many men: to master her._

_“Drăculea,” she said, tasting the strange name, licking the flavour off her lips._

_“This is a dream,” he told her. “I’m going to do whatever I want to you in this dream. But when you wake, you’ll only remember the pleasure.”_

_She moved back from him, stepped out of her petticoat and skirts, and stood naked before him. His lips parted as he feasted his eyes on her, and she saw herself through them: hourglass figure, her belly and breasts softened slightly, but her body still youthful, still ripe, golden hair loose down her back, and the golden down between her legs, darkening as she grew more and more wet._

_Then she moved to undress him, her fingers scrambled to get him out of his clothes, wanting to feel his flesh under her hand._ _He gripped her hair to pull her to him as he kissed her, his mouth and tongue greedy, insistent. She whimpered into his mouth as he drew a knuckle between her legs, finding her clit swollen and sensitive. He backed her towards the chaise lounge,_

_“Like this,” he growled into her ear as he made her straddle the lounge, her hands gripping the back rest. One of the floor length mirrors installed expressly for such purposes reflected the image of them, his body upright behind her, one arm across her breasts, holding her in place against him._

_He entered her with agonizing slowness, his eyes locked on the mirror, watching her with a kind of steely admiration._

_“So tight for a gilded whore,” he informed her. “I admire you, darling. I’ve fucked for armies myself, more than once.”_

_As she watched his face in the mirror, Justine could swear something about it had changed. His eyes seemed somehow darker. She was about to say something about the lengthening of his sharp teeth, but he slid his hand down her belly, over her clit, and she suddenly didn’t care any more._

_“That’s right,” he purred in her ear, using one sharp-nailed finger to move her chin to the side. “You want me to do this do you, don’t you.”_

_“Anything,” she gasped, on the edge of climax._

_Then she saw the fangs, wet with slaver, visible under his snarling lip. She had no time to speak, and she couldn’t find the voice to scream as his teeth went into her throat. She could only groan as the orgasm broke over her. Through a blurred haze, she watched as he sucked, lapped at her blood, a thin stream of it escaping his mouth and dripping down over her collarbone on to her breast._

_Then, with a strength and speed she couldn’t comprehend, he had her on her back, cock again inside her, only now his muzzle was wet with her blood. In a trance, she lay back, feeling the tightening in her belly, her groin increase._

_“What monster are you?” she wondered, then whimpered as he drove deep into her._

_“Take your pick, my darling,” he rasped through the fangs, his blood filled eyes smiling demonically down at her._

_She reached up to touch those fangs, letting her fingers slide over their needle points. He took her hand, turned it and bit into her wrist. Now she did scream, the pain penetrating her flesh. When his mouth went to hers, it tasted coppery salty, smudging her face with her own blood as he kissed her deeply, hunger masquerading as lust._

_When he sank his fangs into her breast, she came crying, writhing as he supported her arched back. When he moved down to kiss her cunt, to lavish her with attention, she sighed with pleasure. She almost didn’t feel it when his fangs slipped into her inner thigh. When he came up, he was wet from her blood, and also from the gushing orgasm he’d undertaken to give her in recompense._

_“Gorgeous little feast,” he told her, kissing her everywhere he’d bitten her._

_She wasn't sure when he’d carried her to her bed. He was still so hard as he entered her again, stroking her blood stained hair, tonguing blood from the wounds, gentle now that he seemed to be sated, this greedy beast._

_“Am I going to die?” Justine wondered._

_“Likely,” Drăculea said, kissing her mouth. “If not tonight, then sometime tomorrow. The committee's already sent a force and your lover the Austrian general has no plans to engage them.”_

_“How do you know this?” she frowned._

_“Look at you, pet,” he said, stroking her ravaged body and making her wince. “Would you go to war for a woman on death’s door?”_

_“Bastard,” she whispered._

_“You’re not worth what you think you are,” he told her with a smile. “But you were worth waiting for.”_

_Then he rose from the bed, and began to dress. It took all her strength to reach out to him._

_“Wait.”_

_“I’m on a schedule, Justine,” he said, glancing out one of her tall windows. “I don’t intend to get trapped here.”_

_“Please,” she begged. “One thing. Please, Drăculea.”_

_He sighed, and went to her side, stroking her cheek with his knuckles. “Tell me.”_

_“My son,” she said, gripping his hand with all the strength she could muster. “Take Jean-Martin to Isobelle.”_

_“That ship,” he said abruptly. “Has sailed.”_

_“Don’t lie,” she hissed, letting go of his hand as though it was something foul. “You killed me. You owe me this much.”_

_He touched her cheek, then bent down and kissed her softly. “You know, I’d take you with me. If you were a less annoying woman.”_

_She crumpled inside, feeling the hate and passion boiling together inside her, but unable to give voice to her rage._

_“Please.”_

_“All right,” Drăculea said. "If we see each other again, I expect you to remember it."_

_She'd been too disoriented to comprehend these words, so she'd agreed, and then sent an order to her servants._ _He permitted the boy to say goodbye to her. Then he had left, whistling a jaunty tune. It had taken three more days for the force from the_ Comité de salut public _to arrive, in which time she had somewhat recovered. When the killing was done, they put her in a black maria. When Carrier decided wanted to perform another of his baptisms, the convoy was diverted._

_The last thing she remembered was how strange it was that she had been under water for hours, and could yet see the sun shining through the surface._

Justine woke in darkness in her hotel room. Naked, she rose, went to the bathroom and closed the door so that she could look at herself in the full length mirror. In it, a woman of lovely proportions, with blonde hair cut into a blunt bob, a face made for portraiture, and a set of identical bite scars on nearly every part of her body. She touched her left breast, where three marks showed where he’d fed on her. She could remember now with clarity the sensation, the intoxication of his bite, the absolute rigidity of his cock inside her.

She didn’t know if she wanted him, or if she wanted to kill him. Which, she supposed, was a dilemma he could appreciate. 


	8. George and the Dragon

Jonathan never would have seen him had he not taken to loitering around the Old Bailey, but Arthur Holmwood had asked him to keep an eye out. The young barrister would have been difficult to distinguish from his fellow officers of the court in their wigs and robes from his perspective in the gallery, but George Drysdale had a smooth, deep voice, and his gestures were measured, confident. 

Jonathan had consulted the registry, then his mobile and discovered that George Drysdale was of a Dover family. He’d taken his researches further, confirming what he already suspected. The name Drysdale was an ersatz anglicization of the name Drăculea, the pseudonym taken by young emigree Georges Sárkányszív upon his arrival in England. 

His mother Isobel and his young cousin, Jean-Martin, had both died from cholera shortly after their arrival, but Georges had done well for himself. He’d presented himself at Cambridge, and began practicing law in his twenty-first year, about the same time Jonathan’s own grandfather was born.

As he paced the city in the footsteps of Georges’ descendent, Jonathan wondered how much longer he had to live. Dark haired, dark eyed, with the same articulate eyebrows and mobile mouth of his medieval forebear, George searched the curb for an unseen quarry. He pulled out a mobile, and Jonathan heard him speak the words as though they were being spoken into his own ear.

“Where are you?”

“It depends, pet,” came the silken sweet female voice from the phone’s speaker. “Where do you want me to be?”

“I have to see you,” George Drysdale murmured, and Jonathan could feel the ache in his voice. 

The lights of a passing car moved over him, and his wedding ring glinted on his finger. Jonathan knew from his investigations that Drysdale had been married the better part of five years to a woman, a human rights advocate, who had borne him two children, both still young. He wondered if Drysdale was normally predisposed to wander, or if this was an exception. He’d wagered on the latter.

It was easy, following the cab from the rooftops. Jonathan enjoyed the feeling of the wind against his skin as he raced forward, preternatural speed moving him across the gaps, until he found himself at, of all places, the Langham Hotel. 

It was very much the same as he remembered, though the interior had been somewhat modernized. He followed Drysdale up to the top floor, then slipped out through a fire exit, scaling the wall until he reached the window of the suite.

He knew Justine the instant he saw her, lounging at the vanity, wearing a short, neat white cocktail dress. She licked her pouty red lips as she went to answer the door’s knock, but instead of George Drysdale, Jonathan was surprised to see Vlad Dracula. 

So, evidently, was Justine. She took an automatic step back as Vlad moved forward, her brow knitting into a pretty little frown. 

“Young George has reconsidered his choices,” Vlad said abruptly as he closed the door behind him. “You didn’t really think I’d permit you to harm one of my blood. And yours, too, you vicious little apostate.”

“I had to get your attention somehow,” Justine said as she sank down on the corner of the well appointed bed, then leaned back on her palms, bringing her shoulders up and pressing her breasts together in a show of such blatant coquetry that Jonathan wondered that she thought it would prove remotely effective. 

And yet Vlad was drawn to her, though more for her cool defiant expression than her body’s offer. He smiled down at her, and then - Jonathan felt more than saw it - turned his attention to the window where Jonathan had concealed himself. 

Go. This is my concern. 

Jonathan felt a frisson of irritation. He thought about revealing his presence to Justine, wondering what she might think of that, but then he caught the scent of another quarry far more enticing.

Below, George Drysdale lingered by the cab stand. He gazed into his mobile, seemed torn between making a call and sending a text. Finally, with a growl of enraged frustration, he flung the phone into the storm grate, where it bounced, shattered, and then fell through. As though on cue, rain began to patter down. 

Before he realized he’d even moved, Jonathan’s feet found the cement. He tapped Drysdale on the shoulder. When the young man turned, saw Jonathan offering his mobile, his face seemed to relax, and his shoulders sagged. 

“Bad night?” Jonathan asked as he unlocked the phone, held it out. 

“Thanks,” George said. “But I think it’s better if I don’t.”

As he glanced around for a cab, Jonathan tilted his head, and saw the mark, close to where the meat of his shoulder connected to his neck. It was delicate, but still fairly fresh. When George turned his head around, he immediately caught Jonathan’s interest, and automatically raised a hand to cover the mark.

“She must enjoy you,” Jonathan said quietly. “To show such restraint.”

George met his eyes. “You...know her?”

“Not personally,” Jonathan said as he raised a hand, summoning a taxi to the curb. 

He could see George performing a kind of mental calculus, factoring in a series of assumptions. Jonathan knew him to be attracted to women, knew Justine had a reputation as an excellent lover. He also now knew George was developing an addiction to the fang, just as Zoe’s Arthur was. Jonathan considered the young man and wondered if perhaps...just maybe...

“What did he say to you?” Jonathan asked as the cab moved forward. 

George blinked at him. “I’m not...completely certain.”

“Probably for the best,” Jonathan said with a smile. “My name is Jonathan Harker.”

“George Drysdale.”

“I know.”

“How do you know that?”

Jonathan didn’t answer right away, watching as the black cab pulled up. He reached down, and opened the door for the young lawyer.

“Come to my flat,” he said, surprised at the dominant calm in his voice. “And I’ll do my best to answer that.”

George hesitated. Then licked his lips, and ducked down into the cab. 

\--

Justine sat down on the corner of the bed, her expression compressing into a full pout. Her pale blue eyes followed him as he moved towards at a languid pace. She hid her apprehension well, but he could feel it. He could also see, just visible under the skillfully applied makeup, the shape of his own teeth, forever imprinted in the skin of her throat, and in the soft curve of her breast where it showed above the white ruching of her very decollete dress.

“You, my darling,” he said in a dangerously soft voice. “Have been very naughty.”

She raised her chin and sniffed contemptuously like the aristocrat she was. He felt a little frisson run through him. She was as choice now as she had been three hundred years ago. He’d enjoyed her, enjoyed consuming her. Now she, like him, had been resurrected into a new world. 

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” she said in flawless English, her girlish voice failing as ever to convey the authority she longed to possess.

“Keep dipping your hand in the biscuit jar, you might lose it,” he said playfully, intending that she understand he was not playing at all.

“Oh,” she said and then flashed him a smile. “You mean George. I like him. I wouldn’t hurt him.”

Vlad was going to say more, but she rose, then went to him, resting her hands against his chest with such intimate ease that it turned aside his thoughts. He wondered how it was possible that even now, she had the ability to distract him so easily. 

“I’m hungry,” she said in that candy-coated voice, plaintive, cloying and yet irresistible. “Aren’t you?”

He looked down at her hands, her sharp nails perfectly manicured and painted a bruise pink. He touched them, amused at how her beastly nature fit so well into the contemporary aesthetic. But then, that was true when she’d been alive. 

“I could eat,” he said, licking his lips. It was true, though he was far more intrigued at the idea of watching her hunt. 

It occurred to him that this bride might be the answer to the Lucy question. Hedonistic, deadly, without scruple. And of course, beautiful as a razor’s edge. What’s more, Justine’s blood was sacred blue. Lucy had never known power beyond her beauty, but Justine had used her body to direct armies, even if Vlad Dracula had never given her the chance to fully realize that power. 

He helped her into the white fur coat, and she accepted his arm, fitting quite well against him in his tailored black. 

It was a short way from the club where he preferred to hunt, so they decided to walk. Her murderously spiked heels clicked on the pavement, adding extra sway to her hips. Vlad enjoyed the way she took the attention she received for granted, intent as she was on her object. 

The club was large, low, full of glitterati and city workers. A lot of loose ties, casual drug use, and charged sexual energy. They shouted at each other over the music as they downed expensive cocktails, and danced, gyrated, grinding on each other as though inaugurating the end of the world, and all of its rules.

Vlad led her to the catwalk. While he could blend easily into the crowd, she was stunning and therefore conspicuous. It was a strategy that had worked very well for her, but was not conducive to subterfuge. The Harker Foundation had cleaned up after her thus far, and while Vlad suspected they were happy to acquire new subjects, it wasn’t a good habit for her to get into. Times had changed. 

“Tell me,” he said into her ear, resting his hand on the back of her neck, letting his knuckles move over the delicate outline of her vertebrae.

Her eyes moved over the crowd, tongue wetting her lips. Then she looked at him. “Who should I choose?”

He searched the room, eyes moving over all of these potential meals, each of them throbbing, energized, full of hot blood. Then, his eyes lit on a young couple, necking in the corner. They were exchanging mumbled words of desire, blissfully unaware of the goings on around them. 

“There,” he said, indicating.

“Why them?” she wondered, frowning.

“Listen.”

She closed her eyes as she picked up the sound of their voices, then opened them again, a smile spreading across her face as she turned to him.

“They’re foreign,” she said. “From Russia, and from...where is that?”

“Bolivia,” Vlad confirmed. “Lovely, isn’t she?”

“You chose them because they’re visitors,” Justine said. “Both of them from elsewhere. They aren’t expected home.”

“Clever girl,” he said, then bent down as though her intended to kiss her, moving his mouth to whisper in her ear instead. “Now show me.”

It had been easy. They tailed them as far as their cab, caught the name of his hotel, and then took their time in following. By the time they arrived, the couple had already introduced their bodies to each other, and were fucking with all the energy of youth. 

The vampires waited until they were exhausted. Vlad showed her how to attack in stealth, but she couldn’t resist a bit of showing off. The girl, naked and dusky, glistening with the sweat of her new friend, couldn’t scream around Justine’s hand. Vlad watched as Justine threw back her head, showing prodigious fangs, and then sinking them deep into the girl’s throat. 

She whimpered rhythmically, the sound blending with Justine’s moan of pleasure. The young man, Alexi, only stared as Vlad drank from him, intoxicating him with his bite. It was a short time before Justine dropped the girl’s naked, pale body, tilting her head back to lick at her blood soaked mouth. Blood had seeped down between her breasts, spoiling the white dress, but this did not appear to bother her. 

Evidently still hungry, she approached, fangs bared, tilting her head with predatory inquisitiveness. Vlad lifted his head from his victim, smiled, inviting her. In an instant, she’d sunk her fangs into the other side of Alexi’s throat. The boy tried to scream, but he could only whimper as Vlad pressed his fangs back into his flesh. He cradled Justine’s head as, together, they drained the helpless young man. 

Once they were sated, Vlad released him and the Alexi fell forward, as inert as a manikin. He’d been clever if shallow, had a girlfriend back in Russia, had been a chemistry student. He was hardly exceptional, but his blood was suffused with an overriding lust, and now Vlad felt it pulsing through him. 

Justine, soaked in red, seemed to have experienced a similar result. Her blood filled eyes locked on him as she moved towards him. He felt almost paralyzed by desire, enthralled by the vision of her, mouth stained with innocent blood. He had experienced so many things in his long years, but this, the image of his bride, red from the hunt, was something he had craved almost more than anything.

Her bloody mouth was hot on his, suffused with stolen warmth. He pulled her against him, taking her face in his hands, tasting the girl’s blood on her tongue. He allowed her to push him back on to the twisted bedcovers, groaned as she straddled him, grinding against his erection as it strained from his trousers. 

He tore the dress from her body, pulling it apart like tissue paper, then pressed his face into her freckled cleavage. She divested him of his suit, getting his trousers all the way to his knees before losing interest in them. He shuddered as she slid her mound against his cock, but then frowned as she withheld from him. 

Then, she palmed his cheek, her thumb coming underneath his chin. He allowed her to tilt his head back, groaned as her lips touched his throat. She buried her fangs in him just as he buried his cock inside of her. 

Then, she rose up, grinning like a succubus, angled her head, and sank her teeth into him again, this time his shoulder. He cried out, arching, going deep into her, gasping as she fucked him with her teeth, as she tore into his wrist, then slid down to savage his flank, using her hand to work his cock as she turned her head, fed from his femoral artery. 

Each wound healed almost instantly, of course, but his flesh remembered the penetration, and he knew that was her intention. She wanted him to know what he owed her, even if she couldn’t make a permanent record of it. Finally, when she was satisfied, he pulled her against him, rolled her on to her back and then fucked her until she wept, mewling under him as she came at his command. 

When they were both sated, she curled against him, kittenish and pensive. It was a deception, he knew, but it had served her well in the past, and he found it quite endearing. So unlike his other brides. It was just possible he might keep this one. He bent down, put his mouth to her ear. 

“If you cross me again, I’ll rip you in half,” he told her gently, looking down into those sky-blue eyes. “I will make your suffering last. I’ve forgotten more about inflicting pain than any man alive has ever known.”

She absorbed that, again showing that pretty little frown, then tucked her head under his chin and let out a tiny sigh. He stroked her hair, kissing her knit brow until it relaxed. 

_Do you love me?_

_No._

_Will you ever love me?_

_No._

Glutted, Justine fell asleep, and didn’t wake when his mobile vibrated. Vlad picked it up, saw the text from Zoe. 

He didn’t hesitate, even with dawn coming on. It took him fifteen minutes to reach her London flat. She was waiting in the doorway in her dressing gown, her wet hair clipped up, her whole attitude perfectly ordinary, except for her blue eyes, dark with amusement as he navigated away from the patches of light. 

“We’ve found --”

“I know,” he said, then took her face in his hands and kissed her. “Don’t talk.”

She sniffed at him, and he knew she could detect all of the scents of his recent adventures. Her measured gaze judged him, held him, but she did not speak.

“I love you,” he said. “Do you believe that?”

“I thought I wasn’t supposed to talk.”

Her gaze was steely, but she softened, than took his hand. He wanted her, but the daylight drained him of his last reserves, so he was content to fall asleep in her arms. 


	9. Willing Prey

“You seem nervous,” George observed. “More than me.”

He was very comfortable Jonathan’s old sofa, already unbuttoning his top shirt button. He’d chosen black, to obscure blood stains. 

Jonathan twisted his hands together, gave him a bland smile. “I’ll be honest. I’ve never done this before.”

George frowned. “Drunk blood?”

“Not from an actual...person,” Jonathan confirmed. “It’s hard to explain, but I get my meals pre-packaged.”

“What, like a dinner kit?” George said with a grin.

Jonathan blinked. “A what?” 

“It’s when you can’t be arsed to cook for yourself.”

“Oh,” the vampire said, evidently not understanding at all.

“Listen,” George said. “Maybe I should go --”

Jonathan sat down next to him, and looked at him with penetrating blue eyes. “Don’t go.” 

Then George shivered as he drew a cool, clawed thumb over his lower lip, his eyelids lowered at half mast, his tongue tracing the line of his teeth. 

“Do you trust me?” he asked, and now George could see the porcelain finish of fanged teeth under his lip.

He’d never been intimate with a man before, but he felt drawn to this strange, antique gentleman. Jonathan had been frank with him in the back of the cab, had given his age, confessed his inexperience. It had amused George that he had been a Victorian property lawyer. His aesthetic now added up. His old world waistcoat under his tailored suit had made sense. The apartment was a museum. 

“She,” he murmured, his throat suddenly dry, causing him to reach for his glass of whisky. He swallowed and continued. “Justine, she…”

“She makes love to you,” Jonathan suggested. Then amended, and smiled. “She fucks you.”

George nodded. 

“It doesn’t have to be sexual,” Jonathan said quietly.

“I think,” George said quietly. “I’d like it to be.”

Then, he took Jonathan’s hand and drew it to the erection straining at his trousers. Then, as Jonathan unzipped them, drew out his cock and closed his fingers around it, he gasped and tilted his head back. 

Together they watched as Jonathan stroked him, as clear pre-come began to well up from the head. 

“Maybe it’s vampires in general,” he suggested. 

“Maybe,” George muttered, arching slightly from his lower back, sliding himself up through Jonathan’s hand.

“Would you want me if I was an ordinary man?” Jonathan wondered, but idly. “Or I you? It’s hard to say. So to speak.”

He grinned then, increased his speed. George groaned. 

“If you’d done this,” he breathed. “I think I’d broaden my horizons.”

“What if I kill you?” Jonathan said softly. “It’s a risk. I have almost no experience.”

George, not quite hearing him, just shrugged his shoulders. “I trust you.”

Jonathan’s hand other hand slipped down, against his taint. “Do you want me to go further?”

“I want you to fuck me,” George confirmed. 

The vampire, once having divested him of clothes, pushed George’s legs apart used his tongue to tease him, relax him. He was patient, holding George back against him as he breathed through the pulling sensation, then the slow thick pressure as Jonathan’s cock entered him, filling him completely. 

“Oh my god,” George whispered, tilting his head back against Jonathan’s shoulder, groaning as his greedy hands moved over his body. Then, as the vampire began to fuck him, George cried out, his erection so rigid he thought it might snap.

As with Justine, he came as the fangs went into his throat, felt the rush of wet warmth staining his inner thighs as it evidently went through Jonathan as well. The sensation of being fed on was so perfectly soporific that he felt utterly relaxed, transfixed sexually and spiritually.

Jonathan’s hands were greedy for him as his groan vibrated against George’s skin. As he felt himself grow gradually more limp, he could feel the vampire exploring his blood, drawing memory from it. First, his sexual trysts with Jonathan’s fellow bride. Then his life, late nights at the office, making partner after an exhausting year of hustling, whole weeks where he didn’t see his wife or his boys. Darkness began to draw in the edges. He was growing more and more anesthetized, his breathing slowing, his heart now struggling to circulate his blood. 

I’m going to die, he thought. The image of his wife, his son and daughter, floated up through the mist as his blood deprived brain cast around for meaning. Was this how an overdose felt?

He felt the jerk of alarm, felt the vampire’s teeth leave his flesh. He fancied he even heard a gasp of fear, but it might have just been his own imagining. It was the last thought he had before the darkness closed over him. 

\--

“Zoe. Help me.”

The voice at the other end of the phone was a pleading whisper suffused with fear. Jonathan sounded like a terrified child. Immediately she began to dress. 

“Where are you?”

“My flat.”

Naked, Vlad watched her from the bed, still a little bloodied from the mauling she had given him. She eyed him, knew he’d heard, decided there was no way she’d be able to keep him out of her hair. She tossed his clothes at him.

It took them fifteen minutes to reach Jonathan’s flat. Zoe knew the team from the foundation would be behind shortly. She’d briefed them on this possibility, and when she arrived to find Jonathan mostly naked, cradling the barely-breathing body of a handsome, strangely familiar young man, she felt more prepared than she’d thought she would be.

So it utterly surprised her when Vlad cut across her, dragged Jonathan up by the scruff of the neck, then backhanded him. The blow sent him crashing into the wall hard enough to crack the drywall and shake the flat. 

“Vlad,” Zoe snapped, but he ignored her as he bent down to the young man, touching his pulse. Then, it clicked. The resemblence between them was striking, particularly in the cheekbones, the dark hair, and the strong chin. Had his eyes been open, Zoe imagined they would the same liquid black. 

“They’ll be here in a few moments,” she said, checking her watch, then looking with concern at her fellow bride. 

Jonathan whimpered as Vlad turned on him, his fangs fully extended, irises filling with blood. 

“Is this your revenge, Jonathan?” he hissed as he advanced on the younger vampire. “Feeding on this man knowing I’ve forbidden it?”

“I’m sorry,” Jonathan whispered, trying to make himself as small as possible. “I couldn’t stop.”

“Get out of my way.” Zoe barked, moving around Vlad to bend down next to Jonathan, reaching for him. He withdrew for an instant, then allowed her to palm his face. 

“Zoe,” Vlad growled. 

“Fuck off,” she told him. “You should have been here. You should have taught him. Instead you were off murdering children for sport. Get out.”

Vlad snarled, but Zoe rose and stared up into his face. He looked around her at Jonathan, then back to the young man spread out on the sofa, just barely breathing. 

“Or what?” he demanded. 

“I’ll kill him,” Zoe nodded to the prone figure, then bared her fangs as she returned her eyes to her maker. “I bet he’s delicious.”

“Bitch,” Vlad said, but his monstrous aspect was receding. The sound of sirens broke into their heavy animosity. He looked down at Jonathan, then back at Zoe. “How can you do this to me?”

“Go,” she told him. “I’ll take care of it.”

He sniffed, then went to the young man, gently touched his cheek. The sudden relaxing of his shoulders, knitting of his brow told Zoe that whoever this relation was, he was somehow dear to Vlad. Part of her wanted to go to him, to reassure him, but she was angry and he was gone before she could reach out.

Instead, she gave her hand to Jonathan, and he clung to it as Jack Seward and his team arrived with a stretcher and an already prepared transfusion kit. They watched as they loaded the patient on to it, and inserted the needles. 

“You’re not coming?” Jack said, looking between Zoe and Jonathan. 

“Keep me posted,” Zoe said, noting that the patient was already improving, his breathing becoming stronger. “I’ll meet you at the quarantine later.”

The team carried him out, down the elevator to the ambulance. She and Jonathan waited until the sirens faded. Then he shuddered. 

“I’m sorry,” he said in a small voice. “I should have...I just…”

“Yes,” she agreed. “You should have. But I should have helped you. Vlad…”

“He’s right,” Jonathan said. “I didn’t plan it, Zoe. I just wanted him, and I took him. I didn’t want to be in control.”

“Neither does a tiger,” she told him gently. “When it’s caught a lamb.”

She led him out of the flat, out into the cool night air, and he seemed to calm. Hand in hand, they walked through Hyde Park. 

“I’m going to teach you how to feed with restraint,” she informed him. “Under controlled circumstances.”

“I’m not hungry,” he said bitterly. 

“You will be,” she said. Then she hailed a cab, and directed the driver to take them to Arthur’s flat. 

\--

“He’s away until later,” Zoe told him as they walked into Arthur’s clean, sparse apartment. 

Jonathan watched her as she stripped off her clothes, his eyes following the delicate curves of her long, lean body as she walked towards the bathroom. Arthur had no tub, but had constructed a walk-in shower, a tiled space with a built in seat, and several recessed shower heads. 

Without really thinking about it, he likewise undressed, and followed her in. The hot water felt so good on his skin, but even better were her hands, soaping his body, washing the blood from him. Purifying him. Then her mouth on his cock, so exquisite. The last time a woman had done this to him it had been over a hundred years ago. Now, Mina felt like a dream he wasn’t quite sure of, but Zoe was powerful in her sexuality in a way he’d never experienced with any woman. 

Still, Zoe whimpered as he pressed her back against the tile wall, lifting her effortlessly, sliding himself into her as her legs wrapped around his waist. She was as invincible as George had been fragile, and he fucked her standing up, driving straight up into her. She came beautifully for him, restoring some of his confidence. Then she bore him down to the floor, straddled him, and buried her teeth into his throat.

He came hard inside her, groaning as she drew the blood from him, rich vampire blood. When she couldn’t consume any more, she used her clawed fingers to hold open the wound in his throat, letting the stolen blood run down into the water as it drained away. He watched her in a haze, moving his hand up to cup her breast, then sliding it back down between her legs, pressing a knuckle against her clit. She squeezed his cock with her kegels as she came a second time, breathing his name in a way that made him feel like control was within his reach again.

He carried her to Arthur’s bed, and there, held her down and fucked her with enough force to make the legs of the bed skid. He wanted more, to really hurt her, to take her to the limit of human endurance, but he restrained himself. He would, he promised himself. But not tonight. 

“Yes,” she whimpered, clinging to him. “Jonathan.”

Jonathan didn’t stop, could not have stopped had he tried. He watched himself come in the small of her back as he fucked her from behind, then found her clit again with one hand, made her come wet for him, so easy now that he knew her body. 

It took the onset of daylight to finally force his surrender. He fell asleep with her arms around him. 

\--

Zoe did not sleep. Daylight did not have the same soporific effect on her as it did on other vampires. She held Jonathan to her, stroking his hair absently as he lay against her, dead to the world. 

Arthur let himself into the flat, careful to avoid letting too much daylight spill in from the open door. If he was surprised to find two vampires in his bed, naked and tousled, he concealed it well. 

“Well?” Zoe asked, looking up at him. 

“He’ll live,” Arthur said. “He was conscious enough to give us all the information about Justine de Comtois.”

“Vlad knows where she is,” she said bitterly. “He’s been reacquainting himself with her.”

“He hardly needs help being a bastard,” Arthur reminded her. “He’s been disciplined, but with a new playmate…”

The last of the sunset light disappeared from behind the curtains. Jonathan’s eyes opened, and he blinked up at Arthur, then sat up. 

“George?”

“On the mend,” Arthur assured him.

“Oh thank god,” Jonathan breathed, then sat down on the corner of the bed, and pressed his forehead with his fists. 

Arthur went to his closet and extracted a black bath robe. He extended it to Jonathan, who pulled it on, and pushed his fingers through his hair. 

“How do we want to do this?” Arthur said.

Jonathan looked up. “I don’t know.”

Zoe took charge. She went to Arthur’s closet and selected one of his long t-shirts. Then she took the hands of both men, and led them out into the sitting room. Once there, all of them seated on the couch, she unbuttoned a few of Arthur’s shirt buttons, pulling his collar away from the dark, gleaming brown skin of his neck.

“Throat?” he said, a little surprised. 

“He needs to learn how to do it properly,” she said firmly. “You don’t mind?”

“No,” Arthur said. “You know I don’t.” 

“Neither did he,” Jonathan muttered. 

Arthur looked at him. Zoe knew that he was not sexually attracted to men, but he also enjoyed being bitten the way men of Jonathan’s time enjoyed drinking absinthe. As he extended his neck, showing the vein, Jonathan’s face changed. He became intent, blood seeping into his gaze, his fangs descending. He licked at his lips, his mouth clearly watering for the throbbing artery as he moved closer. 

“Jonathan,” Zoe said. His blood red eyes flicked up to hers. She thought that was a good sign. When she touched his cheek, he closed his eyes, enjoying the sensation as she stroked his cheek the way a cat might. 

“Carefully,” she told him. “Don’t tear the skin. Just pierce it.”

Slowly, Jonathan obeyed, denting Arthur’s skin with his fangs just enough to prick it, then slowly he sank them Arthur’s flesh. Zoe felt her own hunger tug at her, but she resisted as she watched him closely. Arthur gasped, tilted his head back, his chest heaving as he absorbed the sensation. 

“Listen to the rhythm of his pulse,” she instructed. “Let the blood come to you, don’t try to draw it.”

Arthur breathed deeply, his eyelids lowering as he absorbed the feeling of being fed on. She knew he was no longer able to deny himself this indulgence. For better or worse, and likely the latter, he was addicted.

Jonathan, through a supreme effort, lifted himself away from Arthur’s throat. He sat up straight, his own intoxication evident as blood dripped from his open mouth. Zoe couldn’t help herself. She took his chin in her hand, and licked her lover’s blood from the mouth of her fellow bride. His vampire aspect subsided as he kissed her. Arthur lay back against his couch, breathing deeply as the thrall began to lift. 

“Isn’t that better,” she murmured as she fit herself into Arthur’s inviting arms, his head falling against her shoulder. 

Jonathan nodded. “Yes. But I will I always be able to stop myself, if you aren’t there?”

“Practice,” she advised. “Find people no one will miss. Spend time getting to know your victims.” 

“Victims,” he repeated, and sighed.

“It gets easier.”

\--

Dr. Veronica Bloxham did not like this at all. Dracula’s presence in her laboratory did not augur well. She regarded him as the monster who had stolen her friend’s humanity, and had disrupted the study he was supposed to be subject to. 

“Where is he?” he asked with deadly calm, his tall black presence like a sucking void in her bright lab. 

Ronnie withheld the answer, staring at him in dislike. “Why do you need to know? It’s hardly your business.”

“That man is a son of my house,” Dracula said, a sneer twitching up at the corner of his mouth. “It is my business, Dr. Bloxham.”

That surprised her. “A son of your house? A descendent?

He nodded. Suddenly she understood. The young men, all of them with the same colouring, same black hair.

“Justine wasn’t threatening you,” she said, astonished. “She was threatening him, and wanted you to know it.”

“Take me to him,” Dracula pressed, and then tilted his head, giving her the impression of entreaty. “Please.”

Ronnie led him into the quarantine, mostly empty space that was surrounded by plexiglass walls. Further towards the middle, a room had been built into the space with one way observation inside what looked for all the world like an ordinary hospital room. Indeed, they even had items with logos on them, for when they needed the patient to believe they were in one hospital or another. 

George Drysdale lay back against a raised hospital bed, wearing a plain looking hospital gown that snapped up the front. He was still pale, but the blood now cycling through him via Zoe’s transfusion machine was bringing colour back to his cheeks. His dark eyes were bright as he looked up at the man who had fathered his line, this creature of eternal red night. 

George blinked. “Do I know you?”

Ronnie stepped forward. “George, this is --”

But Dracula raised a hand. George’s eyes followed the clawed fingers. Ronnie saw at once, the memory returning to the young man. He wasn’t afraid, but rather, confused. He seemed to sense there was a familiarity, a kinship...some missing piece in his own understanding.

“Dracula,” he said abruptly. “You’re Dracula.”

“How on earth --” Ronnie began, but George smiled at her.

“My great, great, great grandfather,” he explained. “He was an emigre from the French Revolution. He took the name _Drăcule_ a to hide his identity and…”

“To honour the relation who paid his passage,” Dracula said with a smile as he sat down in the visitor’s chair. “One assumes it became anglicized after a sideways fashion. I didn’t follow up with 19th century matters until much later.” 

Ronnie suddenly felt like a third wheel. She looked at the two men, decided that if Dracula intended him harm, her presence would hardly make a difference. 

“I’ll just…” 

George looked up at her, appealing and guilty. “My wife, has she…”

“It’s going to take some time,” Ronnie said gently. “You’ve been exposed to an extreme degree. She understands that, to the extent that it is possible, and seems to be doing well.”

George nodded helplessly, then looked down at his fingernails, running his thumb over one. They remained firmly in place, no sign of decay. Ronnie gave him an encouraging smile, and then made herself scarce. 

\-- 

George examined the man seated near him. He had more squareness to his face, something older in his features that was not a reflection of his visible age, but another time. He rather thought he looked like an old fashioned movie star. 

“My name is Vlad Dracula,” he said calmly. “Third of that name, of Wallachia. I died in 1476, and rose shortly after. In life I had three sons, two of whom lived to breed, though I never met my grandchildren.”

“You stayed away?” George frowned. “That seems…”

He smiled. “I was free to learn my nature. I was in my prime, forever. They didn’t need me to carry on with my feckless family destiny, and I didn’t see the point in subjecting myself to watching them age.” 

“I can’t imagine that,” George said, looking again at his hands. “My boys are still just babies, really, but...christ, I’ve been a fool. Just an absolute berk.”

“You never had a chance against her,” Vlad assured him. “Justine is nothing if not choice, even as a mortal woman. She never attained the education to really affect the course of history, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. She cultivated her charms instead.”

“She’s my ancestor, too, isn’t she,” George observed. “Adjacent, anyway.”

“She belongs to me,” Vlad said, not possessively, but rather taking responsibility. “As does Jonathan Harker. If I decide to spare him.”

George sat up. “Don’t hurt him. He didn’t know what he was doing. He…”

“Oh, I’m going to hurt him,” Dracula grinned. “I think he rather likes it, actually.” 

“Christ,” George said. “I feel like I need to be in rehab or something. They’re so worried I’m going to change. Or...decay. I can’t get a straight answer.”

Dracula sniffed the air, and smiled. “You won’t. Neither of those things.”

“Dr. Bloxham,” George said with a frown. “She said that, if I don’t...there was a strain in my genetic ancestry and they wanted to study it. Isolate it out of…”

“My genetic legacy,” Vlad affirmed. “Well. Perhaps I’ll finally learn the secret key. Though in fairness I’m up to my eyes in brides and they’re causing me no end of trouble, so I don’t see what use I’d make of it.”

“You love them,” George said. “And me. In some...distant way.”

Vlad smiled as he rose. “When you are five hundred and forty three, it’s easy to forget you were ever really part of the living.”


End file.
